Play Is The Way

In a world of wonder, infants and puppies make the best teachers. Hands and paws down. 

The work of babies and puppies is play. It is the way infants learn and the way puppies grow into dogs that love. When seen clearly learning and love are closely related. 

It is when we explore and delight in the unknown with open hearts (courage) and alert minds that we create life and learn to love.

BTW: EVERYTHING at essence is unknown. We live in mystery. Accept that. Because on some levels there are red and green lights with seemingly clear meaning does not negate the essential mystery. This literal response is the last refuge of the pitifully freigtened and ignorant among us.

It protects you from the insecurity of living a creative life and may keep you from crashing into other vehicles, which can save a few bucks on insurance premiums with which you then buy other distractions. Milkshakes in my case.

“This is the real secret of life - - to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” ~Alan Watts

I’m going to keep it simple this week. Recognize that wonder sparks play. Keep a gentle eye out for the magic combo in your everyday comings and goings.

Take a moment to ‘identify with’ the feeling - the spirit of play - when it presents in your life.

Enjoy seeing a dog at play.

Enjoy feeling a playful moment in your life. If you laugh - express gratitude to the Universe.

We laugh when we understand and see change. Much more coming on this phenomena. We will nurture our too little attended Comic Sense.

Share a short reflection - a sentence or a couplet - a word even - in the comments as a gesture of shared understanding.

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“Understanding is love’s other name.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Play and love are selfless actions. They are not commodities for personal acquisition. They are not ‘on offer’ as so many assume. Shopping for ease (forms of leisure) and love is common today. 

They’ve become BIG businesses. 

We want what we think we need. The ‘we’ that wants is sold to us so we will sell ourselves, whom we think we know, what we’ve already been sold. And we need more and more and more. We are ‘self’ fulfilling junkies.

What we truly want is a fulsome sense of living alive. We need WHOLE SELF, not an insecure trembling thought born version of self in constant need of reassurance and milkshakes.

Let’s find our way into life lived alive through the window of wonder and play. Pay attention. Appreciate the lives we live together. Can we see and encourage one another? I know it’s not the 60’s anymore (was it ever really?). . . nevertheless, is it too late for peace and love?

“The more I wonder, the more I love.” ~Alice Walker

Wonder gives depth and breadth to the spirit of play, making it more than just entertainment. It imbues play with a sense of life and discovery. 

When we play with a sense of wonder, we are not only enjoying ourselves and sharing joy with others but also uncovering fresh visions and expanding our understanding of the world. 

We participate with awareness and presence in the creation of humane worlds. We overcome petty self to serve WHOLE SELF in which we all share. We wonder and give rise to love and peace.

I know that there are powerful cultural forces and vastly fortified commercial interests that make this all sound like nonsense. The rantings of a woo-woo utopian fool. So be it. 

I am a human who has had the privilege of great opportunity and good luck. I also have troubles, disappointments, and heartaches. I live in ‘real’ life. I have a checking account that I use regularly to meet obligations and expectations. Thankfully, I live indoors and eat (mostly) wholesome food.

Having survived and thrived in the rough and tumble of show business, many if not most think they would trade places with me. I’ve had dinner at the the BEST tables (all tables are not created equal) in the BEST restaurants, in Hollywood, London, and New York with bonafide MOVIE STARS and MOGULS.

I’ve shared limos, private jets, and hot tubs with THEM. So there!

I am a fool in the highest and best sense. I’m here to tell the truth. Truth to power. A fool (trickster) in the King’s Court. The realm of bullshit power.

I’m sick of wonton self interest, greed, war, corruption, and destruction.

The way out is through wonder and play. 

Make the world safe for babies, dogs and the rest of us. Let’s get over our minuscule selves and our petty preoccupations. Let love shine bright.

“When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. The throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity. 

So, when we wholly concentrate, like a child in play, or an artist at work, then we share in the act of creating. We not only escape time, we also escape our self-conscious selves.” ~Madeleine L’Engle.

PAY ATTENTION! WAKE THE FUCK UP! PLEEEEEZ!

Until next time. . .

Lights Up!

The Alpha and Omega of it ALL

Our greatest gurus live among and within us.

As so-called adults, infants confound us with their raw childishness. Free expression, vulnerability, spontaneous mood shifts, and unselfconscious behavior challenge our ordinary (accustomed/conditioned) thoughts and disrupt our lives. 

As they quickly grow through the toddler stage and into childhood their brilliance shines brightly. They are beacons of what we once knew and have mostly forgotten.

Our sense of. . . 

WONDER

The distinction between childish and childlike is easily lost on us. It, like many critical distinctions, is desensitized in us. These distinctions do not serve the abject compliance that the dominant producer/consumer social systems require and advertise incessantly.

The price is heavy. We live less than fully alive lives, and believe it is the grown-up and responsible thing to do. We, if we’re honest, are afraid to stray too far from what’s acceptable and remunerated.

Many of us, nevertheless, feel an inkling that we have been had. We remember childhood. It is impossible to wholly separate us from the most fertile learning time we’ve ever experienced.

Listen to Pops. Remember?

Childishness carries a negative connotation. It’s associated with selfishness, immaturity, and irresponsibility. We must contain it. 

Family (with well iintended though rare exception) and school (with almost no exception) take every step possible to diminish these qualities. Not without some good purpose. We don’t want to live in a world of tantrum throwing, unregulated, and emotionally erratic people. Right?

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Childish people live trapped in short-term-thinking and display limited regard for and an inadequate ability to wholeheartedly respond to the needs of other persons.

It is tragic that in the clumsy process of ‘civilizing’ our children the wonders of childlike brilliance get trashed. 

We, as persons and as a culture, pay a heavy price. 

Today, as life writ large changes dramatically, we are in danger of forfeiting essential human creativity, our core source of collective compassion and humanity.

“What seems to me the great American danger we're all in is that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it." ~Mike Nichols

CHILDREN AS CREATIVE LEADERS

Childlike qualities are key to our capacity to thrive and heal a world threatened by childishness. A profound irony.

Listen to Louis Armstrong again as he suggests what a world of wonder looks like. See in him the clear personification of childlike qualities expressed in the song.   

- Openness and innocence

- An ability to see life with curiosity

- The capacity to find fresh perspectives

- A sense of awe and joy and appreciation

Let yourself feel these qualities as a reflection of Louis Armstrong as he reminds us that, with childlike perspective, “It’s A Wonderful World.”

There remains a child within you that remembers wonder, remembers a connection to each other and to something larger than ourselves, remembers a desire to explore, learn, and connect.

We, in our childlike hearts, want deep connection. 

We want to live alive, courageously inspired to engage life and its inspirational mysteries.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” ~Albert Einstein 

We all too readily trade imagination for ‘reality,’ as if they constituted a binary. Only one at a time. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. Imagination and reality are inseparable, inextricably entwined. You can’t have one without the other.

“Realism is a bad word. In a sense everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and the real.” ~Federico Fellini

Wonder invites a sense of discovery and surprise by opening us to the unexpected. 

Wonder encourages us to see life not merely as a series of tasks or routines but as a series of delightful experiences waiting to be discovered.

LET’S GO TO THE MOVIES

I’ve found no more inspiring a film to celebrate delight and wonder than “Willie Wonka And The Chocolate Factory.”

Those who have been reading ACTING HUMAN for a while know well that I crave milkshakes. Often my fix is chocolate flavored.

While I’m not a fan of homework as such, I nevertheless (strongly) suggest that you view “Willie Wonka,” which is available on several of your favorite streaming services.

I’m certain we’re all keen to have your impressions after viewing. What did you see? How did you feel? In what ways did the film amplify ACTING HUMAN?

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Think of the ‘assignment,’ and this new approach to ACTING HUMAN, as confectionary offerings. Tasty, easy to digest gifts, meant to inspire the art of living. 

For those who occasionally want a heavy meal, there are nearly fifty posts preceding this one. Each of which will keep you chewing until your jaw cramps with plenty of chow left on the plate to stock a bulging doggy bag. I’m always available in comments to respond to questions and observations.

Making art of any kind takes practice. 

ACTING HUMAN practice uses theater craft as a model for and a means to learn and use intentional creativity in daily life. You are welcome to reread the last post, OVER(re)VIEW. The value of iteration in learning is inestimable. We are here to learn (unlearn?) together.

As we nurture the art of living life alive we heighten vitality and enlarge humanity in these fragile times. 

Never has the need been greater for ACTING HUMAN. 

We must create a world in which empathy, compassion, genuine care, dynamic connection give rise to joy and peace with sufficient utz to animate our world. 

Art is the antidote to indifference, inhumanity, and senseless destruction.

“A child's attitude toward everything is an artist's attitude."  ~Willa Cather

Until next time. . .

Lights Up!

Please pardon the interuption. Some may have noticed that ACTING HUMAN went dark for a couple of weeks. I have a doctor’s note.

Sufficed to say a few bugs ganged up on me. Nothing worthy of medical jounals or great concern. Just pesky, persistent, and distracting ailments. I’m on the comeback trail. [CUE: APPLAUSE SIGN]

The time away gave me space to consider how to proceed. As I’ve repeated often (harped?) my hope when starting this newletter was to form a community of ‘practionioners.’ People coming together to leatn to act with the understanding that “we all act all the time.” Sharing skills in community can and will alter consciousness in the ways art enhances life. Upleveled consciousness arises in collaboratiion. Observable community in comments, crosscurrents and connections, have not taken shape.

So, we’ll make adjustments. Exactly what I’d do in rehearsal as an actor, writer and/or director. Make changes.

To kick off this new phase, let’s look at a brief review of what we’re up to here. As we do, any and all responses are MORE than welcomed. Whatever that means. Is there a superlative to welcome? What do YOU think?

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ACTING HUMAN BASICS

What is Acting Human?

A practice rooted in ageless wisdom, contemporary science, and ALL the arts expressed as Actors craft. 

We use skillful means, the same kind accomplished artists use to act, make music, write, paint and dance - practices designed to create our daily lives with artistic intention. We all act all the time. There is nothing false, fatuous, nor pretend about acting human.

To the contrary, ACTING HUMAN roots us in a sincere and ongoing search for truth, universal connection, intuitive union. Acting connects everyday life and the art of living, transforming ordinary lives, by means of imagination used with intention and courage, to extraordinary living.

Acting Human practice focuses on our everyday behavior, it uses our stories as they unfold in felt experience as source, out of which, with  intentional practice, our extraordinary lives emerge. We intend to recognize and expand our awareness; naturally we create our lives by skillful means. 

As we grow in awareness and skill, we feel more connected to ourselves, each other and the WHOLE of our lived experience.

We “live life alive,” develop a spontaneous sense of aliveness and vital connection. That’s what we’ve deeply wanted all along.

Acting Human urges us to see beyond the glossy magazine version of artful living. It sets our sights on success greater than the store bought kind. It asks us to see past stylish clothing, must-have technology, status signals, and exotic vacation destinations. It sets us on our way to creating lives as art.

On the other hand, Acting Human doesn’t tell you what to wear, or where to go for sun, fun, or frosty drinks. You can sip a Coco Loco on a white sandy beach. That’s in perfect harmony with Acting Human practice. When you mindfully sip, your Coco Loco will taste SO delicious you may order another one, or three.

Different drink? Specific beaches that make your hearts sing?

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There are five key intentions at play when we practice:

To GROW

Allow more spacious vision.

See greater possibility and choice.

Open our hearts.

Judge less, define less, limit less.

To KNOW

Contemplate and USE ageless wisdom.

See beyond mere information.

Continuously ask questions arising from genuine curiosity.

Know that knowing is useful only in so far as it serves know-how and moves us to action.

To FLOW

Tune to aspirations that guide us to freedom.

Minimize distraction.

Set aside self-consciousness and welcome creative risk.

Let work feel like play.

Engage challenge with skill to move into flow.

To SHOW

Awaken to life as shared story.

Play our stories as felt experience.

Connect truly with self and other while open and vulnerable, with generosity and courage.

Welcome imagination and mystery as natural and essential. 

To GLOW

Shine bright as we are all made of stardust.

“We are the stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands” ~Carl Sagan

Ignite kindness and compassion.

Energize universal connections in presence and purpose, to reveal all that moves us in the direction of truth.

I see all people as actors creating selves in moment to moment lives. Here. Now. Always.

“WE ALL ACT ALL THE TIME.” It’s always the right time to learn and practice, so we can live and come together joyously in lives lived truly in love and peace.  Is that such a bad idea?

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WE CAN LIVE LIFE ALIVE.

Until next time. . .

Lights Up!

Buddha In The House Of Confusion

Many of us have played the ‘telephone game.’

It has nothing to do with smart phones. Although the same consequences are realized at lightening speed given the propulsive power of our pocket computers. 

The game is played by a group of people, preferably sitting in a circle. The first gives the second (whispered) a short piece of information a story fragment, some form of thought. The second passes it on to the third and so forth. By the time we get to the end of play, the initial ‘thought’ is altered in the course of consecutive tellings. Often transformed so that it has little to do with the original form. All in a matter of minutes.

When ‘telephone’ is played over centuries, and compounded by travel through varied cultures, places and languages - confusion reigns supreme.

And so it is with the Buddhist precept of Anatta, a Pali/Sanskrit term which has been through many language grinders, now most often translated as   ‘no-self’ or ‘non-self.’ 

If I have ‘no self’ and you are a ‘non-self,’ then who the hell is writing and reading this sentence?

What has happened with the concept of ‘anatta’ is reflected in our understanding of ourselves, all our relationships, and in the way we see our lives.

“There are different ways to explain ‘anatta,’or no- self, yet fundamentally it denies our separation from other people and from the rest of the natural world.” ~David Loy

We have separated our lived experience into language bound categories, black and white phenomena. We’ve lost sense of our deep and inextricable connection to the whole.

ACTING HUMAN does not deny the existence of self. Rather, we reveal ‘self’ as a creative process that neatly maps over acting craft to help us effectively practice essential skills for living fully human lives alive. To do life truthfully with intention and imagination.

We’ve learned to keep a safe distance from truth. Propelled by fear. We fear taking creative risk. Allowing ourselves the vulnerability necessary to connect is a risk too great to take. And, we cover the absence of genuine connection with easy substitutes bought off the shelf. 

The substitutions come at a price. We lose the desire to question and quest, the capacity to sit in the discomfort of ‘don’t know,’ which serves to reveal truth, create trust, and seed love. A great tragedy.

“The mystics, saints, and others make great efforts to wake people up. If they don’t wake up, they’re always going to have these other minor ills like hunger, wars, and violence. The greatest evil is sleeping people, ignorant people. The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that. The only tragedy there is in the world is un-wakefulness and unawareness. From them comes fear, and from fear comes everything else.”  ~Anthony de Mello

Count me among the ‘others.’ Well, maybe a tiny bit mystic, definitely not a saint.

ACTING HUMAN is a clarion call to WAKE THE FUCK UP!

It is not woo-woo and not for cave dwelling. This practice intends to serve us in all aspects of our lived lives. It recognizes we are actual people with challenges and no shortage of practical problems.

WORLDLY MATTERS

The world is in turmoil. It seems to me we’re at a crucial stage in our relationship to sanity and humanity. 

As I talk with students/friends regarding work, business, and personal relationships there is no doubt that strains are persistent and threatening.

We’re all living in a topsy-turvy world where our personal, social,  and environmental ecology is fraught.

Show Business, where many of my students and friends work, is in free fall. It is in the middle of convulsive shifts, and in the immortal words of Al Jolson, ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet.’

I’ve seen a thriving music business, where skilled musicians could ply their trade to make an excellent and dependable living, disappear almost entirely. Gone.

As went the music business so goes most other businesses in this turbulence.

Many factors play into the radical change we are experiencing. Not the least of which is technology. 

“In order to make peace with technology, we have to make peace with ourselves.”  ~Tristan Harris

ACTING HUMAN invites us to a world of wonder. To engage imagination and to grow intuition informed by keen awareness.

“While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity.”  ~Hermann Hesse

Unity is synonymous with peace. That space where our nature aligns with NATURE writ large. A natural state of connected understanding. Palpable truth that gives rise to trust and love. 

Love enlarges our hearts. Our infinite and connected source of contagious courage. 

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”  ~Carl Sagan

Never is a long time. Long enough to recover an appetite for truth and trust. We create self and our view of the world. We can escape the bamboozle vortex with courage and a sincere desire to use our creative energy in service of sanity and humanity.

MEDITATION

ACTING HUMAN functions as a mindfulness practice. It is akin to meditation in action. We meditate when we intentionally observe what we do.

There are endless misconceptions about meditation. Sufficed to say, for now, that meditation is not about withdrawal from life. Quite the contrary.

“The real meditation is how you live your life.”   ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

Meditation shines light on mind. Delves into consciousness to see what and how we see with increased clarity. Slowing down to pay attention.

While some traditions believe ‘enlightenment’ is the goal of meditative practice, an acheivement to seek, many teachers see meditation as of value in and of itself.

Ego, our concept of an absolute and exclusive identity, a singular and separate ’self,’ dissolves as meditative practice matures. 

”Enlightenment is ego’s ultimate disappointment." ~Chögyam Trungpa

SIMPLIFY AND PLAY

“In the 1980s, simplicity was seen primarily as ‘downshifting,’ or pulling back from the rat race of consumer society. Several decades later, there is a growing recognition of simplicity as ‘upshifting’ — or moving beyond the rat race to the human race.” ~Duane Elgin

ACTING HUMAN explores how to live a vital human life rooted in connection, understanding, and creativity. 

"Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that you shut down, deny, and close off. You can know all of that with some sense of humor and kindness. By knowing yourself, you’re coming to know humanness altogether."
~Pema Chodron 

Remembering to play is central. We learn to live life alive as we play. Humor helps us remain resilient and bouyant. 

“In one his movies, the comedian W.C. Fields walks into a bank and up to the teller's window. The teller asks, "Can you identify yourself?" Fields says, "Of course. Do you have a mirror?" When presented with one, Fields immediately states, "Yup, that's me!"

It's meant as a joke, but it carries a ring of truth. Who among us can say they really know themselves, without illusions, beyond the face in the mirror, their name-rank-and-serial-number role in the world, their personas, defense mechanisms, and self-deceptions? Do we distinguish between when we are being authentic and inauthentic? Do we know what we really feel about things, what our true values and priorities are, what lies below the surface of consciousness, and what makes us tick?    ~Lama Surya Das

Let’s make this a dialogue. Use the comments section. Take a risk, dammit. We’ll have fun, perhaps a few laughs, and we’ll learn much from and with each other. Whaddaya say?

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Until next time. . .

Lights Up!

Wake me when it’s NOW. . .

Time slips and slides. Where it lands nobody knows. Very slippery. And stealth. 

The more astute readers among you may have noticed that Sunday has become Monday this week. 

Labor Day. A time to note the passing of Jerry Lewis.

There are, sans aucun doute, a smattering of Parisians who mourn his passing. In Hollywood. . . not so much. But that’s a tale for another day.

I do miss the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon. I’d like to see Jerry reunited with Dean Martin one more time. ‘Oh well,’ I sigh. Luckily, we can bask in the glow of ‘once upon a time.’ Thank you, Mr. Sinatra. 

BE HERE NOW

This admonition, now commonplace, was initially popularized by Baba Ram Dass, formerly known as Richard Alpert, excuse me, Professor Richard Alpert.

Later, a few years after the Professor bit hit the skids, Baba gently slid away, leaving plain Ram Dass, which has hung on tenaciously over so-called time.

The book entitled Be Here Now by Baba Ram Dass, an homage to his Indian guru, Neem Karoli Baba, was originally distributed in a limited edition, crudely printed on three-holed craft paper bound with string. I can’t remember how I got it, only that it came in a plain cardboard box. My original copy is buried in a place unknown to me, somewhere deep in the sands of time. 

I found this page especially attractive.

Be Here Now has since taken many physical forms, been made widely available and read by millions. Through the book, a grueling road schedule of wisdom spewing and hilarious appearances, along with a plethora of new writings and recordings, he’s had and continues to have an impact in our culture. (RamDass.Org)

Ram Dass, too, continuously transformed physically. Beards and haircuts. Costumes and body shapes - he was inclined to eat in excess. Then, he had a massive stroke in 1997 that resulted in aphasia and paralysis from which he recovered slowly and substantially, though not fully.

He died (dropped his body) at his Maui home in 2019 -  there are worse places to drop a body - having served 88 calendar years on Earth. 

I’ve known Ram Dass through all his names and most iterations of his signature book. While I saw him in the flesh at rare intervals, he’s a consistent influence and a wonderful teacher in my life. You’re getting regular doses of him here.

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EVERYTHING CHANGES

Time moves in patterns that challenge our perception. To say it changes is to misrepresent its true nature.

“Space and time are not conditions in which we live, they are modes in which we think. . .we know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” ~Albert Einstein

NOW is a convenient pointer to a mode of mind. A thought. A concept. A function of language.  A way to pay attention.

We actually live liminal lives, slip sliding in time and space. Neither here nor there; and always here and there. We remember and foresee in passing thoughts and images ‘alive’ in active consciousness. We feel like a living person with an identity. . .that’s how we ‘know’ we’re conscious.

“We should not think of our past as definitely settled. . . . My past changes every minute according to the meaning given it now, in this moment.”  ~Czelaw Milosz

Probably not a terrible idea to wear helmets. Life can easily disorient us, and often does. We can all too easily fall down and hurt ourselves.

“Our experience of consciousness is so intrinsic to who we are, we rarely notice that something mysterious is going on. Consciousness is experience itself, and it is therefore easy to miss the profound question staring us in the face in each moment: Why would any collection of matter in the universe be conscious? We look right past the mystery as if the existence of consciousness were obvious or an inevitable result of complex life, but when we look more closely, we find that it is one of the strangest aspects of reality...

Before posing any questions about consciousness, we must determine what we are talking about in the first place. People use the word in a variety of ways; for example, in referring to a state of wakefulness, a sense of selfhood, or the capacity for self- reflection. But when we want to single out the mysterious quality at the heart of consciousness, it’s important to hone in on what makes it unique. The most basic definition of consciousness is that given by the philosopher Thomas Nagel in his famous essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” and it is how I use the word throughout this book. The essence of Nagel’s explanation runs as follows:

“An organism is conscious if there is something that it is like to be that organism.”

~Annaka Harris from “Conscious: A Brief Guide To The Fundamental Mystery Of The Mind” (annakaharris.com)

NARRATIVE NOW 

We live life alive and thrive as HUMAN ACTORS when we learn to skillfully sync story and narrative. With practice we can see/feel what passes for past and future in a spontaneous NOW. A NOW in which story and narrative play well together in our Earthly sandbox.

Truth is essential. Remember, acting is living truthfully. We must wrap our minds AND hearts around truth in order to embark on the life lived alive trip.

“The best mind-altering drug is truth.” ~Lily Tomlin

We, in ordinary life, are conditioned by school, media, and the wider culture to see through lenses of ‘this or that’ and ‘true/false.’

We’re taught then encouraged to separate, judge, and count. Counting is a BIG ‘to do’ item on our typical agendas.

I suggest we appreciate separation as an aspect of language that serves as a practical device for, as an example, accountants. 

Their profession mandates that they measure value (mostly money or its equivalents) in pasts, presents, and futures. The same holds for all record keeping occupations; counters of all stripes, plaids, various paisley patterns, herring bones and occasionally polka dots. 

Columns that add up satisfy in trivial ways and may help avoid an IRS audit. The latter, while not the end of the world, is doubtless a rigamarole that none of us needs or wants. There is a useful place for counting. 

We, however, diminish our vitality, humanity, and spirit when we confuse counting for what truly counts.

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“Do not let making a living prevent you from making a life.”  ~John Wooden

ESSENCE TRUTH

We’ve developed a nearly limitless capacity for self deception. Our need to believe we are singular and in control is fierce. Fear is at the core of this deceit.

Fear of the unknown. 

Fear of falling apart under stress. 

Fear of loss. 

Fear of looking stupid, poor, or unimportant. 

Fear of not fitting in.

As our efforts to control our circumstances and other people increasingly fail, our fear escalates. It enrages us. A fire within blazes out of control leaving truth in a heap of ashes.

We must practice to understand and feel truth. It is counterintuitive given our conditioned mind. 

Introducing the trio of Bohr, Dass & Suzuki. Not to be confused with Lambert, Hendrix & Ross.

“There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.” ~Neils Bohr

“Across planes of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that things can be simultaneously true.” ~Ram Dass

“If it’s not paradoxical, it’s not true.” ~Shunryu Suzuki

Great truths reveal in moments of experience. 

Facts are subject to comparison and evaluation by objective means, yielding what may have contextual value, though they are not revelatory of great truths. 

“By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.”  ~George Carlin

Learning to feel great truth is a matter of living fully engaged in story . When we pay keen attention, story seeps in by osmosis, it inhabits us, resides as a ready resource, creates a store of organic material for making, recognizing, and understanding true narrative. 

Moving skillfully between lived story and created narrative emerges as ACTING HUMAN, truthful life lived alive. 

We develop and enhance our natural gifts. . . 

Intuition: Gut feelings or instincts. A genuine sense of what feels right or wrong that informs our perception of truth. 

Emotional Resonance:  Genuine emotions that evoke our sense of great truth. 

Empathy and Connection: Inhabiting the world from seemingly other perspectives, ‘as if’ they are our own, reveals great truth. Escaping the identity trap opens us to great truth.

Reflection and Mindfulness: Taking time for self-reflection and living a mindful life sensitizes us to great truth. 

TRUTH AND TRUST

Truth opens us to trust. Trust is essential for connection. Without connection we cannot live alive. We are enlivened and revealed in relationships. 

Everything Connects!

Trust is a quality of heart and soul. While control is a tool of the mind. Trust comes with the deep knowing that we are spiritual beings in physical bodies joyfully acting and witnessing the action. 

When we trust enough in life to give up our need to control, we can relax and open to the flow of energy in our lives. This brings peace of mind.

"The only real security in life lies in relishing life's insecurity." ~M. Scott Peck

Trust is letting go of needing to know all the details before you open your heart. 

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LOVE

Truth and trust comprise the seeds and fertile ground necessary for love to blossom.

Love is the greatest truth.

Love nurtures curiosity. It nourishes our urge to explore, unravel, go deep into the story of persons or ‘objects’ that elicit feelings of love. Understanding our dynamic oneness more completely enlarges and heightens our capacity to love.

“Understanding is another word for love.”  ~Thich Nhat Hanh

“Love perceives the goodness of life and motivates the works that sustain, enrich, and celebrate it. In doing so, it joins our worlds one to another and forges a whole, protecting us from the alienating forces of objectification. It affords the context for truth, even challenging truths, to be shared, so that, conversing one with another, we might gradually grow in knowledge of the things that are. This sort of labor, the life lived together in the ambit of truth, requires courage and patience. It requires dedication and focus. It requires us to resist the anesthetizing allure of the superficial so that we might challenge each other to plumb the depths of experience in order to arrive at the truth of the matter.”  ~Chad Engelland 

Until next time. . .

Lights Up!

All around the town…

We’ve been to Birmingham together. Not for naught. Telling the tale of that journey focuses us on a deep and oft repeated truth of ACTING HUMAN practice. 

“The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” ~Muriel Rukeyser

I promised several posts back to amplify how story and narrative relate. In the interest of keeping that promise I’ve narrated my engagement in the “Salute To Freedom.”

The distinction between story and narrative is of the essence. 

WE LIVE LIFE AS STORY AND TELL STORY AS NARRATIVE.

Our lives lived alive are identical to the Universe. Story we play in a ‘seeing place’ (remember Greece?) called Universal Theater. 

As Sharon Salzberg wisely said: “We are not in traffic, we are the traffic.”

We not only play in the theater, we are the theater. Identical. One singular sensation. Our identity is as wondrous, as protean, and as vast and infinite as all within and beyond this Universe, we enfold and unfold as one in all Galaxies, known and unknown.

“What a journey this life is! Dependent, entirely, on things unseen.” 

~James Baldwin

WISDOM PRACTICE

Everything changes. 

Everything connects. 

PAY ATTENTION!

The only inherent innovation in ACTING HUMAN practice is the realization of an ironic truth. ‘Acting,’ which is typically consigned to the realm of mere entertainment, makes for a fertile and potent life and consciousness expanding practice. 

NOTE: Entertainment when clearly seen is much more than merely mere. 

Furthermore, acting is what we all do all the time.  We call it living. The topper is that acting, which we do all the time, usually mindlessly, can with intention serve as valuaable practice as it has a well established, endlessly adaptable, and readily available body of evolved principles and useable teachings. 

The quality of our attention sets in motion our capacity to live whole and enlivened lives. To see, to observe keenly, to pay attention in ways that show us, in body, mind and soul, that story is what we are made of, and is our natural element, the subject and object of life lived alive. 

Narrative is an overlay we create to make sense of it. That’s where the game gets sticky. The need to make sense can, and often does, cause great confusion, pain and suffering.

We want to come wholly alive. The process evokes fear. Thoughts hold us in check. We remain prisoners of our minds, we mistake our thinking for ‘common sense’ reality.

“Reality is a group hunch.” ~Frank Zappa 

That hunch dictates that we conform to sensible living, going along to get along, locked into herd mentality, deprived of ignited imagination until and unless our hearts come to the rescue. 

Rev. King, as we read two weeks ago, said in Berlin:

“Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music.” 

Jazz is Universal music. It vibrates in harmony with the essence of OUR IDENTITY. It can liberate whole HUMAN ACTORS to live alive on Earth. 

To act, to live truthfully, and to play jazz skillfully are synonymous expressions of wholly alive humans in everyday life. 

Both take skill and come from heart energy. Courage and empathy. With practice we can learn to embrace our whole selves as creators of humanity.

“I like to say that playing jazz builds our humanity in that it presents us with the challenge of not knowing what is going to happen. And not knowing what is going to happen is what improvisation is all about. There is an element of the fear of the unknown, the fear of something different, or the fear of being outside your comfort zone. Hesitancy and reticence, to a certain degree, create the monster called fear.” ~Wayne Shorter

BACK TO BIRMINGHAM

Limited only by narrative (story telling) skills, I told the truth, but not the whole story. I don’t yet ‘know’ the whole of it. It remains in process. I didn’t ‘know’ the whole of it while it happened. I lived the story not the narrative. I still live the story. And I still don’t know.

We all live in story, never fully knowing its source nor its reach. Story, an ‘infinite game,’ arises without beginning or end.

Narrative plays a ‘finite game.’ It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Story in my Birmingham experience, as lived then and lives now, at ever changing levels of awareness, implicate and explicate.  

Many narratives can express in explicate order. A few, in part, for illustration:

Willie Dennis

Willie was first and above all my dear friend. He was not only a wonderful musician and trombonist but a sweet and gracious man. He encouraged me and taught me tacitly. He was nineteen years older than me.

We played together frequently for the sole sake of playing tunes and trading improvisations. Fun and practice. I learned a ton from him. He was far and away more experienced and accomplished than me. I could play, he could really play. Willie would drive me into musical spaces that left me physically breathless. He’d laugh, I’d shake my head, then when I caught my breath, laugh along. (Check him out on Wiki.)

Two years after we were together in Birmingham he was in a car crash. Central Park. Dead instantly.

I can share narratives about Willie Dennis and/or Central Park. Both he and the park play fascinating roles in my life. Each, every bit as poignant and profound as Birmingham.

Parts and wholes inhabit our lives as story. Always.

Willie’s relationship with Morgana. My time with her in the days after his death are narrative worthy. 

All of it is alive in the story (lived experience) on the morning we left to salute freedom. Unseen. Unknown.

Many would say these are ‘just’ accidents. No pun intended. I don’t do puns, and when I slip (rarely), I’m immediately regretful unto sobbing.

I’ve come to appreciate that patterns shape life and creative expression. We’ve touched on the Hero’s Journey, mythic narratives, grounded and distributed in widely varied cultures covering expanses of time and space. Hang around, there are more essential and amazing patterns to reveal.

If we pay attention to unfolding story, as lived, we see into the mystery, we see the wonder of birth and death in tandem, we see the multiplicity of life’s facets, the fractal nature of the lives we live. 

Most often, distracted by what we’ve come to accept as ‘practical’ and ‘real,’ we take life for granted or, if we get a glimpse of its mysterious and magical nature, we quickly explain it away as woo-woo and rush back to serious business.

Morgana King

Morgana enjoyed an illustrious career as a singer’s singer. She had a four octave contralto range, recorded 30 albums, and even though she’s been at work for more than ten years, she was nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy in 1964.

The Beatles won.

The kid trumpet player from whom Morgana snatched a bag of reefer on August 5, 1963 was no more likely to answer to the title Professor Dubin as he was to win an Olympic Gold in the high jump. There was plenty of getting high then and to come, though virtually no jumping. Certainly none on purpose.

As it turns out, I spent the first 18 years of the 21st Century teaching with a full professorial appointment in the Television and Film Department of the ‘esteemed’ Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, though I’d never properly graduated from high school.

Simultaneously I continued to write and consult in Hollywood. Like I told Martin, I’m a trumpet player. Hollywood? How did that happen? Little do we know.

At Newhouse, I fashioned and taught a course entitled Script Analysis which devoted an entire semester to the study of one script, “The Godfather.” It tells the story (as a scripted narrative) of the Corleone family.

The father’s name is Vito. His wife and the mother of his children is called Carmela. They are immigrants from Sicily.

Carmela Corleone was played in the film by Morgana King. My friend, and Willie’s wife, was born in the Bronx like me. Morgana and I, at different times, attended James Monroe High School. 

Carmela has no spoken lines in the film. She does take the stage during its memorable wedding scene, to sing “Luna Mezz’o Mare,” a classic Sicilian tarantella.

Morgana went on to act in other projects, including “Godfather II.” Coppola is reputed to have often solicited her advice on the authenticity of scenic elements as she was the daughter of Sicilian immigrants.

Another dollop of synchronicity. I taught an Introduction to Screenwriting class which included a student, Angela Saggiomo, from Philadelphia, which is where Willie Dennis, then known as William DeBerardinis, was born and raised.

Angela, home over the summer, told her family about our class and mentioned that I, her much beloved teacher, was a jazz musician. They asked if by any chance I knew of her great uncle, Willie Dennis. She had never heard of him. 

Angela returned to school in Fall, to among other things take another class with me - I had many recidivists. She fell by my office to relay her family’s question. Well, you know the answer. 

I learned from Angela that parts of her family, not all of them, were upset with and had disowned Willie, as he had left his nice Philadelphia bred Italian wife for a Sicilian saloon singer in New York.

Both Morgana and Willie had teenage marriages. They met in 1961 at Birdland, married each other shortly thereafter, and exulted in the loves of their lives for four years. 

I stayed in touch with Morgana until she she died, at 87, in Palm Springs on March 22, 2018.

OTHER POSSIBLE NARRATIVES

There are many narratives that the lived story of Birmingham can spark. Each of which move in and out of story that flows as life lived in my experience. Seen and unseen. Narratives that center on…

James Baldwin.

Central Park.

John Lewis.

Children.

Death.

Harlem.

Jews.

Bebop.

Among a plethora of places, people, and events. . .

WE LIVE LIFE AS STORY AND TELL STORY AS NARRATIVE.

Much more on how the story/narrative process influences creative living and the practice of ACTING HUMAN to follow. Please stay with us and bring friends.

Until next time. . .

Lights Up!

Boy is my arm tired. . .

As you’ll recall, lunch is served. I’m seated a chair away from Martin, which is how he introduced himself to me. I’m Dubin, the trumpet player. 

Between us, to my left, sat Harry Golden, a Jewish-American author and publisher who had lived a colorful life (check out Wiki). He’d written several significant books and pieces of journalism. Most consequentially, he now published and edited The Carolina Israelite, as both a forum for his political views as well as observations and reminiscences of his boyhood on the Lower East Side of New York.

Golden, an acerbic wit and ardent anti-segregationist enjoyed an easy friendship with Martin. They shared several hearty laughs over lunch.

I landed at this table by pure intuition, having not the slightest notion that it was a ‘hot’ spot. While I had some familiarity with ‘the movement,’ it was vague at best. I had next to no idea about the cast of characters and knew little of particular history. 

My new friend Martin was far less clear in my minds eye than Bernie Glow, one of the greatest lead trumpet players in the world. My focus was on playing the trumpet, making music and having fun, as much fun as a ‘hip’ young man could jam into his days and (especially) nights in NYC and wherever else in the world ‘the road’ led him.

I’d lived with Black men and women in my daily life since forever, a de facto activist without portfolio. I’d hail cabs for Black friends. No mean feat. One that required sophisticated choreography.

Booking gigs in the Catskills was part of my ‘activism.’ I could show up, appear White, and sell. I spoke a few words of Yiddish, too. That helped. So I made the rounds of agents that represented bungalow colonies and hotels in the Borscht Belt, each of whom thought they were hiring me and my band, presuming we were all white. There were many agents. I booked many gigs, overlapping on the same weekends.

I’d fill out the dates with young Black musicians, making brief appearances at each venue to play a few tunes and clown. 

Back to lunch: Seated to my right was John Lewis, ‘The Boy from Troy.’ We hit it off big time and became lifelong friends. It was a good lunch.

REHEARSAL

We ran down the show in a high school auditorium a short and fraught walk from Gaston’s. Hostile crowds shouted epithets. The notorious Bull Connor was in the street with dogs and his deputies, fire hoses at the ready. 

We were accompanied by armed civil defense guards arranged for by The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights to provide security. The Birmingham Police Department declined to do anything in support of “an invading force of integrated entertainers.” 

The surreal nature of the scene blanketed any fear I might have otherwise felt. It was trippy more than scary. I was with friends going to do what I loved to do . . . rehearse a spectacular show, ultimately to play and entertain. I was cool.

THE SHOW 

“From the get-go, city officials attempted to undermine the event. The concert had been scheduled for Birmingham’s Municipal Auditorium, the site where just a few years earlier, Nat King Cole was attacked. At the last minute the auditorium canceled, offering an unconvincing excuse: thanks to a double-booking “error,” the space had been scheduled to be repainted on the very day of the concert. The paint job, apparently a matter of some urgency, could simply not be postponed. Organizers regrouped, and the concert relocated to Miles College in Fairfield, just five miles from downtown Birmingham. Volunteers scrambled to ready the space: in 98 degree heat a plywood bandstand was erected and lit on the football field. Audience members paid $5 admission and brought their own seating from home, many walking several miles on foot for the show, folding chairs in hand. Some 20,000 attended.”

~Burgin Matthews

All of the entertainers were taken from the hotel to Miles College in private vehicles, the same way we traveled from the airport to the hotel. 

Along our route to the stage we passed many thousands of folk, mostly Black with a scattering of Whites among them, carrying chairs, waving flashlights, and cheering us as we waved. 

My heart swelled unto bursting. 

_________________________

We mounted the stage, double checked our music, warmed up briefly. Moments later William B. Williams, of WNEW radio in NY, welcomed the audience. They roared. 

He introduced James Baldwin who came to the microphone to underscore the extraordinary moment we shared:

“This is a living, visible view of the breakdown of a hundred years of slavery, it means that white man and black man can work and live together.” 

The show kicked off. I have no recollection of the order of acts. Blank. I do recall feeling strong, playing with powerful ease and clear intention to reach each and every intrepid soul that braved the night.

“Martin Luther King sat beside the stage, leaning forward intently to hear the Shirelles and other acts perform. Even purely apolitical pop tunes—the Shirelles’ biggest hits included “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “Mama Said (There’ll Be Days Like This),” and “Dedicated to the One I Love”—became charged with social significance when performed for the cause of freedom. ~Burgin Mathews

Johnny Mathis came on to cheers. He opened with an up-tempo “I’ve Got A Lotta Living To Do.” We were no more than a few phrases into it when I saw him dive off the stage. An instanat later a loud bang.

“…a section of the makeshift stage collapsed, severing an electric line, and the whole field went suddenly dark. For a moment, performers and spectators imagined they’d been bombed — the city had seen so many bombings already — but inspection revealed no other culprit than shaky construction. In the uneasy darkness, the movement choir broke into  freedom songs, and the audience joined in, thousands of voices filling the air like they’d filled the churches, streets, and jails of Birmingham all through the past spring and summer.” ~Burgin Mathews

Thrown to the ground in the collapse, I was stunned. I lie on my back in grass, trumpet held tight across my chest. 

I was in no rush to move. Absorbed in the sound of 20,000 voices singing “We Shall Overcome” I was deeply content. 

My reverie was cut short by Joe Louis, iconic World Champion boxer, and Thad Jones, my section mate. Two LARGE men. They checked on my wellbeing and lifted me to my feet.

Neither I nor my horn was any worse for wear.

While a volunteer crew was putting the stage together, Billy Taylor, a noted jazz pianist played. Dick Gregory got laughs. Others must’ve sung.  Distracted from the happenings on stage, I recall a brief conversation with Baldwin whom I’d known through mutual friends at the Chelsea Hotel in NY. 

In less than an hour the stage was repaired. We were back in show business. We played until well past midnight. . .

WEE SMALL HOURS

The ride back to the hotel was even more moving than the ride there. Thousands of people walking and singing. Flashlight beams showing the way home. Hurrahs as we passed. Breathtaking.

Back to the hotel FBI agents awaited.

There had been bomb threats, hotel and airport. We were directed to evacuate. We gathered our stuff under the supervision of the FBI then were placed on buses and taken to the airport .

A thorough search of the plane was conducted and eventually we got clearance for takeoff. The Spirit of 76 embarked at 5 AM. 

At 9AM on August 6, 1963 we landed at Marine Field, New York City, U.S.A.

My father and kid brother picked me up. My brother caught a glimpse of Johnny Mathis, then a huge star.  He asked, incredulously, “is that Johnny Mathis?” Yeah, that’s him.

I went home to sleep.

Until next time. . .

Lights Up!

From Beginning To Beginning, Again And Again Eternally

STORY TO NARRATIVE

Narrative flows from stories within stories lived moment to moment. In the liminal space of repeated memory storying narrates indelible slices of life that overflow into memories mirrored in visions that resonate in appearances of earlier and later moments lived. We story our lives NOW, then narrate in morphing shapes of memory without end.

All elements of narrative are inextricably entwined. Who, what, where, when, and why are inseparable. 

We can take the elements apart to reflect and contemplate. Which makes for a worthwhile ACTING HUMAN practice when done with skillful intention. Revealed are the many ways a ‘rewrite’ might ‘work.’ 

Never stuck in an exclusive, singular identity, nor trapped in a set of immutable circumstances we are forever free. With curiosity, imagination and creative skill we are liberated to live life alive.

ACTING AND WRITING

Acting and writing are essentially the same process, they are practiced as crafts,  employing differing means of expression. 

We write our lives as we act the moments, and in the acting create a store of stories we use to reflect and narrate. As narrators, on stage or page, we change the whole of our perceived lives, every element and the relationships established and transforming revise all that came before and everything that follows.

All life lives in perpetual motion. It shakes and shimmers in infinite variety.

We live our lives in improvised patterns of vibrational energy. We are music made of stardust and spirit playing without beginning or end in a Universal Theater.

Every narrative, with skill, can take many truthful shapes. Lacking skill we can confound, mislead, and erode trust in ourselves. When we can’t trust, we cannot inspire trust. Our lives shrink and vital relationships wither. The value of living truthfully is inestimable. 

I’ve written elsewhere: “In the process of living our ongoing stories we quietly give meaning to our lives. The deep intention to value life with full and generous attention is what animates our story and initiates a search for truth. Not a static representation of truth but an animating and animated truth, a truth always in motion, always in shifting relation to our stories as they unfold in surprise and reveal fresh truth. Truth is not a fact. Truth erupts out of story lived alive. When we live life alive truth emerges spontaneously and moves us in truthful ways to continuously discover truth.” 

As we learned from Stanislavski and the gang of teachers he inspired:

“Acting is doing truthfully. . .”

Truth is the beating heart of infinite play.

Creative change when experienced in body and soul, with skillful and keen attention paid, ignites life lived alive.

The narrative/story shared now is imbued with the enlightening experiences that spawned it, and speaks to me profoundly, always anew. 

A NEW DAY DAWNS

Sixty years and six days ago, Richie Tringalli beeps his car horn early on a humid morning in August. He’s come to drive me and Willie Dennis to the airport. I’m running a minute, maybe two, behind. 

In five minutes I’m down. I throw my horn, an overnight bag and a hanging show change onto the back seat, slide into the front and we’re off. 

Settled in and under way Richie passes me a match book. I light the reefer hanging from my lips take a hit and pass it to Richie T, an avocational drummer, apprentice electrician, and avid pot smoker.

We drop down onto the Saw Mill, straight ahead to the Henry Hudson Parkway, toss a dime into the toll basket as we hit the West Side Highway above which Willie lives near the 158th Street Exit.

As we pull up Willie awaits with his wife Morgana (King). She asks if we mind her riding along to bid us farewell at The Marine Terminal where we are scheduled to depart on a chartered flight. No Problem. Richie T is totally cool. 

A slight rearrangement of horns, Willie plays trombone, and baggage. Now with Morgana and Willie comfortable in the back it’s off to Queens.

I pull out an ample bag of pot (gage, weed) to twist one up for Willie. Morgana snatches the bag. “What are you doing?” I’m thinking - isn’t it obvious? - getting high.

Morgana is a jazz singer of note and considerable experience, hardly a stranger to musicians and their ways. She insists in a ‘what are you an idiot tone’ that taking a bag of weed to Birmingham (Alabama, not England) is way worse than a bad idea. “I’ll hold onto this until you get back.” I glance at Willie, he glances back with a ‘what are ya gonna do’ face. We’re resigned. She’s Sicilian.

MARINE TERMINAL

The joint is jumping. It’s a jungle of photographers and reporters. Television cameras. 

We wend our way through, toward the other cats in the band. A radio guy thrusts a mic in my face. “Are you afraid of what awaits you?” “No man, I’m cool.” 

I knew it was a different kind of gig but didn’t truly grok the significance of flying into what I now know was the historic Summer of 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama.

NOTE: Much has been written about the events in Birmingham in the early 60s leading to this day.

Followed only mere weeks later by the “I Have A Dream” March on Washington which this show enabled, raising significant money and proving, in its way, that hard won progress had been made.

___________________________________

In short order the press gaggle disbands. The performers including The Apollo Orchestra (the show band in which I play) assembles for a photo in front of the turbo-prop we are about to board. 

Only a few photographers are left, from Life Magazine, Jet, Ebony, The Saturday Evening Post, News Services and the like. Some board with us to document “The Salute To Freedom.”

I begin to more fully absorb the notion that this is way more than just another show. The plane is called “The Spirit of 76,” so named for the 76 passengers in flight to perform the “first integrated variety show to play before a non-segregated audience in Birmingham, Alabama.” Indeed, anywhere in the Deep South. A pivotal event in civil rights history energized by the arts and entertainment. Especially the spirit of music.

According to Rev. Martin Luther King, we would “invade the social consciousness of white America and encourage African Americans, with songs of hope and determination.”

In the Autumn of 1964 Rev. King opened the inaugural edition of the Berlin Jazz Festival with these words:

"God has brought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create - and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music.

Modern Jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of "racial identity" as a problem for a multiracial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.

Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down. And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the particular struggle of the Negro in America, there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these."

My sense of things when leaving the house on the morning of August 5, 1963 is that I was off to play a one nighter with great section mates, E.V. Perry (with whom I would split the lead book) and Thad Jones, both vaunted veterans of the Count Basie Band, and with Panama Francis on drums, the show drummer at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem’s heyday, and a big band loaded with other top-notch musicians. You know, like Willie Dennis, trombonist par excellence. (Check out Mingus’ classic “Ah Um” recording for a delectable taste of superb jazz featuring my dear friend Willie Dennis.)

Whatever we are asked to play, we play. We are professional musicians. And, each of us, in this outfit, is deeply steeped in the traditions of Jazz. We know how to swing hard and laugh heartily.

ON THE PLANE

There’s food. All from The Stage Deli, compliments of its proprietor, Max Asnas, a Russian-Jewish immigrant, a lover of all things show who was disgusted by the mistreatment of Negro entertainers and an avid civil rights supporter forever, from before there was a ‘movement.’ He was also a funny Jew. To wit:  

Reuben (not related to the sandwich) Phillips, the bandleader, wants to go over a few things for which there are inadequate charts (written arrangements). So while flying we do some going over. 

The Magid Triplets, three dancing white boys, have a dixieland section in their act. I’m a decent traditional jazz player, so I was elected to handle the trumpet chores. Life Magazine caught me in the midst of a sky high rehearsal. Thanks to Morgana only the plane was high.

In hours we would land in Birmingham which was roiling in unrest.

Taxi drivers refused to transport the show's cast and personnel. Rev. King collected a caravan of 50 private-car volunteers. Hotels had refused lodgings; Adams got a motel, run by A. G. Gaston, former Negro undertaker and now owner of the motel, the local Negro bank and Negro insurance company to provide lodgings. ~Leo Shull in “Show Business”

We checked into Gaston’s and it was straight ahead to the dining room. Can one ever get enough to eat? I was soon self-seated at a table for eight one chair away from Rev. King. Lunch!

More story/narrative to follow. As you’ll see in the next post or two, my reflection on this storying experience grows spokes that angle, that poke and pulse, in directions unexpected when I sat down to write this dispatch. Such is the nature of story. . . it lives many truthful lives in memory and narrative. The protagonist (me as of this telling) morphs in life lived alive, not in the least bound strictly to a single, exclusive identity.

Until next time. . .

Lights Up!

If you’re thirsty for a 30 minute version of Birmingham ‘movement’ history, here it is:

Yesterday, with laptop in lap and fingers flying, my reverie was disrupted by rude digestive rumblings. With an uncomfortable and persistent crescendo they laid me low. And, to add insult to injury, in the middle of a timely tale I’m keen to share.

Alas, the ‘belly bug’ squashed a feeble atempt to finish and send this morning. So, I’ll take today to self medicate and rest. Expext a rendezous next Sunday.

For now - let’s CELEBRATE the birthday of Louis Armstrong. “Pops” was born on this day in 1900, not on the 4th of July which has been inaccurately popularized.

Here’s “a good ‘ol good one” as he might say . . .

Until next time. . .

Lights Up!

The Midpoint Mandate or Boydate or Girldate or Womandate or Theydate - have I left anyone out?

Well, the first mind pop inspired by seeing Jerry Lee is to marry my 13 year old cousin like he did. Great balls of fire, that would surely move life in new directions. Trouble is I don’t have a 13 year old cousin, so that won’t work.

Back to the drawing board.

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DRAW ON EXPOSITION

Don’t know about you, but I’ve taken my advice. Back to the beginning I have gone. 

By the way, my advice reiterates a lesson learned from George S. Kaufman, an excellent source of advice in all things theatrical, like our lives in the Universal Theater. He said: If you have a problem in the third act, which is where we are headed (the midpoint turns us in that direction) it is rooted in the beginning, somewhere in the first act.

At the start of our journey together I offered an invitation for us to come together as a learning community to explore identity, roles, and potentials as co-creators of our lives and the Universe we share as one. 

The emphasis is on expanding our capacity for empathy and compassion through creative practice, to experience unity with all phenomena particularly in response to current existential challenges.

“The world’s greatest joy is a sense of liberation: the complete dropping of the sense of the single autonomous 'I.'”  ~Tenzin Palmo 

Through ACTING HUMAN we seek to cultivate a supportive ensemble of active learners, to discover in myriad ways our dynamic connection to each other and the WHOLE SHEBANG. To discover mutually that the turbulence and insecurity ever more present in our lives grows out of separation from our true selves, and as a consequence from each other and the LIVING UNIVERSE. 

Having seen active and lively sharing in comment sections of other Substack newsletters I imagined we might find ourselves doing something akin. Alas, not so much. 

As I’ve said before, in my experience up close and personal this kind of creative and vibrant collaboration consistently explodes on bandstands and sound stages, in rehearsal spaces, while writing in groups, and in class rooms. 

How then to imbue this newsletter with that kind of essential life force?

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HELP WANTED

I’ve recently had texts and emails from and calls with readers I didn’t know were reading. Several of them former students who have done well in the business of show, which as many of you know is in the eye of a severe storm. The rapid changes in technology, increased corporate aggregation in an atmosphere of geopolitical angst and media saturation is, to put it mildly, unsettling.

Since they acknowledge, with generous appreciation, my part in shaping their professional lives, they now wonder what I can offer in this new time. Each takes what they can from AH posts and finds what they take useful. They are, however, busy. They are working in a demanding arena, raising families, meeting financial responsibilities, and maintaining relationships. Digging in to what’s offered here is daunting. I get it.

We are on the horns of a dilemma. And the horns grow sharper by the day. Ouch!

Early on I said: 

We all act all the time.

Most of us do not notice our acting.
We create our lives. They do not “just” happen. 

While we develop skills in particular areas of our lives, we largely ignore our capacity to grow imagination and play skills. We “forget” to create a WHOLE life. 

ACTING HUMAN is about paying attention, recognizing that patience and ‘space’ to practice is critical to creating a WHOLE LIFE. Traditional ‘success’ is not enough.

Only enough is enough.

“When wisdom rules,
Horses manure fields instead of roads.
When the world lacks wisdom,
War horses are raised on the commons.              

The greatest evil: always wanting more.
The biggest mistake: always chasing desires.
The cruelest curse: always getting what we want.Only when we know what is enough
Will we always have enough.
To know enough’s enough
Is enough to know.”                              

~The Tao

“You can never be too rich or too thin!” Really?

Clinging to what we’ve been conditioned to expect and what we’ve come to believe is expected of us is at the core of painful lives, despite any and all appearances to the contrary.  We can cover but we can’t hide from ourselves as hard as we may try.

As has been beat to death in several AH posts, we embrace socially sanctioned salves and when one wound closes (temporarily), we open a new one. Always more.

Don’t believe me. Check.

Spend a quiet, gentle, empathetic, questioning, and honest moment alone. Please.

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METAPHORIC MAMMAL

Life as theater is a vital metaphor that gives us a powerful, rich and fun way to see ourselves anew and transform the way we live.

The Moscow Art Theater was conceived with the intention to bring people together, create a common cause, common goals, common labor and joy, to fight banality, violence, and injustice, to serve love, and nature, and beauty.

The First Studio, influenced by Suler, extended its reach well beyond acting and into ethics, philosophy, and ‘spiritual’ practice. 

Stanislavski said: Suler believed that art — and the process by which art was made — could implant those precepts here on earth. The world was a dishonest and broken place, but people were fundamentally good and had the potential to make the world truthful and beautiful. Theater could enable this by telling the truth, and by revealing the unspoken common language that connects us all. 

Not the common language of words which, for the most part, unless carefully considered and patiently questioned, tend to obfuscate meaning and impede connection. 

The word is not the thing it names. Words simply point. 

“The map is not the territory.” ~Korzybski

ACTING HUMAN grows out of the highest and best tradition of The Moscow Art Theater, the birthplace of modern theater process. It is offered to encourage life as an infinite game (Carse) and to highlight creative ways to meet the particular challenges of our time.

“The purpose of art is to urge people to be more attentive to each other, soften their hearts, and ennoble their actions.” ~Suler

WHERE ARE WE?

In retracing the posts extant I’ve found a deep and wide thicket of valuable information along with what looks to me like sincere encouragement.

There are a few exercise/practice elements that are tried and true. The only chance of them working is if they are repeatedly done. That’s the thing about practice . . . it takes practice.

I write (mostly improvise) this stuff and I’ve only gotten through the first seven posts in the past week. I’ll push on and invite you to do so, too. What’s been written is meant to illuminate what follows. It’s exposition.

In all immodesty, there’s an overwhelming batch of worthwhile material to review.

Truth told (and why not walk the talk?) I write on Saturday, dust off a first draft and ship it to you for Sunday.

The most attractive part of doing this newsletter is the opportunity to discover my mind in the moment and interact with you so that we can help each other in a ‘creative’ and playful way.

Many of you are friends and we talk about this ’stuff’ beyond the confines of this newsletter.

Evidently, there are more of you than I knew. I’m delighted to hear from you privately, feel free to stay in touch, remember though that we can share here, too, in the comments for the benefit of all.

Almost everything I’ve done in the realm of so-called work’ has included  a ‘hang’ of some kind. Playing with others and enjoying the interaction is where I’ve found joy. The sound of music, laughter, the smiles, nods, and surprising nonsense that inevitable erupts is why I show up.

I learned to practice in early childhood. That was the price of admission. My practice at home made it possible to practice together with accomplished others who always came prepared to play. We’ve had BIG fun. 

In the weeks ahead I will continue to review and see what arises that might inform a turning point worthy of our attention and active involvement. And, we’ll surely get back to story and narrative.

It appears that in the midst of your busy lives that I can better integrate important individual, conceptual, and daily concerns with ACTING HUMAN practice if I know what they are. Please share your lives to the extent you’re just at the edge of or slightly outside of your comfort zone. Let the courage to create greater equanimity and more vibrant lives for all move you.

Life is not easy. Never was and it might be even more difficult today than yesterday. We can help each other. A primary principle of creative play - help your fellow players.

I remember addressing this before - it deserves repeating. I have no intention to do therapy. Any therapeutic value derived is a happy accident.

My take is that too much of life nowadays is seen in terms of pathology and treated in pseudo-medical fashion - as we’ve increasingly abandoned art and wisdom traditions as essential to individual and community life. We are entirely untethered in a sea of insecurity.

There are, doubtless, appropriate conditions for psych treatment. Exciting new modalities are on the horizon. I’m not adverse to psych treatment when necessary. I’ve taken friends to Bellevue. 

The healing value of life lived alive with increasing skill and deeper respect for valued legacy is almost entirely overlooked to our extreme detriment.  While there’s no quick fix, we can create new beginnings that will resonate eternally.

Pay Attention.

That said, ‘talking’ to each other in the comment section will, no doubt, uplift our time together. I’ll keep an eye out for what’s on your minds and hearts. 

It will surely influence the direction we take.

Until next time. . .

Lights Up!

Welcome To The Midpoint 

Beyond a mere idiom that suggests fleeting time, ‘Tempus Fugit’ offers a scenic view, a panoramic vision of universal truth, a wide angle on impermanence, and with deep listening a perfect opportunity to absorb the eternal music of arising moments that score and color the wonder and mystery of our precious lives.  

HERE WE ARE. . .AGAIN

We’re six months into ACTING HUMAN, the Substack Newsletter. Using the container of a calendar year, we are smack dab in the middle. In narrative terms, a critical place in the plot. The midpoint.

Midpoints ask us to shake things up in our narratives. Those of us who write plays, especially for the screen, are steeped in the adage that screenplays are ‘structure, structure, structure.’

Plays need to make more sense than life. We, in ordinary life, use narrative entertainment to satisfy our need for safety. Narrative structures that give us the feeling that life makes sense, more or less, in one way or another.

And, we separate ourselves from direct experience of story as we impose narrative prematurely to avoid the dangerous discomfort of not knowing.

The rub is that we cannot learn if ‘think’ we already know.

Our discomfort sets us on a course rooted in fear that avoids ‘don’t know mind.’ We kill curiosity and rob ourselves of the joy that resonates from learning to live life alive. Out of fear and avoidance we settle, instead, for ‘life styles.’

HEADED FOR THE PROMISED LAND

And so, as promised, we embark on a deep dive into narrative. We will learn to use story and narrative instead of getting swept away from our human creativity as others use story and narrative to have their way with us for purposes that do not serve sanity and humanity.

Narratives begin with exposition, the introduction or beginning that reveals important background information. Actually, as we’ve already discussed, and we’ll rediscover ad infinitum (lotsa Latin today) every moment is new and expository.

For now, before we ‘shake things up’ as befits our arrival at the midpoint plot turn, please return to the beginning. My humble ask, please reread the first post, ‘Here We Are,” and, at least, scan the posts that bring us here.

https://www.actinghuman.com/p/here-we-are?r=8sat

Do it in the spirit of full and easy engagement in the process of co-creation. Enjoy your desire to live an enlarged and vibrant life.

“I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”  ~Mary Oliver

We, like Mary, want to nurture our capacity to merge and reemerge in rhythm with the world, to vibrate in modulating harmony as one, to rotate freely within Universes and Galaxies. 

We want to nurture our need to live life alive, not merely metabolize as biological specimens and exist pro forma. (More Latin, which - ahhh - happily conforms to the rule of three. I have structural needs, too. Nobody’s perfect.)

We want to nurture our human impulse to participate intentionally, to practice, to learn continuously, to create eternally (outside of time) and emerge organically (recreate) as whole HUMAN ACTORS in oneness with all creation.

Until next time. . .

Lights Up!

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Drag Queens Are Not Our ONLY Storytellers

She’s back - our regular guest - Muriel! Obviously not a drag queen. Maybe I should hold up on that conclusion. As James Thurber said, “. . . be careful of the conclusions you jump to, one of them may be your own.” 

Can a female show up as a Drag Queen? Is there an exception for Lesbians? We live in complex times. T’was ever so, no? Courageously plowing ahead. . .

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” ~Muriel Rukeyser

The plot thickens.

“Atoms are stories.” ~Dubin

We are mired in a slew of language dilemmas. While we’ve flirted with the impacts of language, we haven’t sufficiently chatted up the crucial distinction between story and narrative. Let’s fix that now, whaddya say? 

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STORY

Stories, like atoms, are naturally occurring phenomena. Every story and every atom is a system of related events in motion. We’ve been conditioned (taught) to see stories as a series of events that take place over time. Conveniently, the nature of time and events is tacitly assumed.

Assumptions, like conclusions, are slippery slopes fraught with dangerous ends.

“Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves.”     ~Adrienne Rich

Life stories (where ‘to story’ is a verb) without any intentional help from us. Put simply, life stories, we narrate. Everything is made of stories. It is the raw stuff of life. We use story to create narrative.

The idea that story happens in linear time is a Metaphoric Mammal thing. We have been conditioned to live in clock time. A persistent sense of forward motion occupies a default space in our minds. Life is, therefore, usually seen in linear time.

Storythink counts passing moments as if on a clock, ineluctably moving forward into the distance.

“Time is a circus. Always packing up and moving away.” ~Ben Hecht

We needn’t do anything but let go, stories, like a circuses, clouds, and ocean currents, will come and go in their own way and time. Our ‘proper work’ is simply to pay attention playfully, effortlessly - in harmony and at one with the experience.

To try hard, as dictated by the widely accepted - effort oriented - success seeking attitudes prominent in our culture, separates us from living experience. No time to waste.

"Seriousness is an accident of time. It consists in putting too high a value on time. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke." ~Hermann Hesse 

With effortless awareness, each moment turns our ‘story’ in new directions. We are nurtured, humored in the ancient healing sense, and born anew in every lived moment.

Pay Attention, though decidedly not in the take notes there's going to be a test fashion we've been trained to do in school. Trust that story is unfolding (it is) and let it permeate as living experience. We are not collectors of experience, we are the experience itself.

As Sharon Salzberg says: “we are not stuck in traffic, we are the traffic.” 

Let your fully lived unfiltered experience spark curiosity and imagination.

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” ~Plutarch

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NARRATIVE

Prematurely imposed narratives construct a barrier to direct experience. We cut ourselves off from lived experience. Our curiosity and imagination is starved. We deprive ourselves of the raw material necessary for robust engagement in the process of intentional self creation.

Organic story material is killed by prematurely imposed narratives. 

When common cultural constructions, embedded by institutions of society like school and media, tell us what the world is like, dictate behavior, and push us to fit into the commonplace scheme of things, a sticky web of ‘premature cognitive commitments’ forms to cut us off from life lived alive. 

Naturally arising story, absent narrative inflection, plays a vital role in creative living. 

It is incumbent on us as HUMAN ACTORS to practice the art of narrative, to use narrative, rather than permit powerful soul crushing cultural pressure that wants narrative to use us - unconsciously.

Fires ignite when raw experience roils in open minds. They light our way, we discover ourselves, warm, whole, and dynamically connected. 

It is of the essence that we invite inspiration to flourish in our lives. 

“Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.”  ~Muriel Rukeyser 

Poetry suggests story at a high vibrational level. It transforms noise into music that encourages us to see our lives clearly as metaphor. We grok and feel life lived alive. 

ACTING HUMAN connects our curiosity and imagination to self creation in an intentional and poetic way.

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WHAT IS NARRATIVE?

Stories simply happen. Narrative is how we shape and tell stories. 

If we don’t hone our ability to pay attention and don’t develop story sense through practice, we are prone to not see/feel this distinction. 

Without an intimate feel for story/narrative distinction, we are apt to miss experience prior to language, thought, and concepts. As a consequence. . . 

We deprive ourselves of phenomenal story that arises simultaneously with the WHOLE UNIVERSE. 

We miss uncategorized events, experienced without definition. We are isolated and see the world strictly from a subject-object perspective. 

“. . .everything is a story: every thought, every belief, every memory (every love, every bias). And every story is constructed by a certain projective quality of the mind. How do we know things about the world? The mind makes scale models, and we test them out. So, the quality of our scale-model-maker determines the relative accuracy of the resulting model which, in turn, determines how close to the truth we end up living. That is: how we tell and receive stories is central to how we think, which, in turn, determines how well (how lovingly, how fully) we live.” ~Geo. Saunders

Life Stories. 

We Narrate.

Narratives sprout the stuff of identity. Storytelling is one important way we recognize and connect with each other. 

How we metabolize the relationship between story and narrative is central to our creative process. As Saunders says, it is determinative of how truthfully, fully, and lovingly we live.

The quality of our narratives determine the quality of our social fabric. 

“There is no selfhood where there’s no community. We do not relate to others as the persons we are; we are who we are in the relating to others.”  ~James P. Carse

Much more (as in lots and lots) on story/narrative coming to fine posts near you soon.

Until next time..

Lights Up!

"What is

is the was

of what will be."

~Lao Tzu or Mel Brooks (take your pick)

Until next time…

Lights Up!

We Can Escape. . .

Most of us are dragged headlong into the cultural currents of conformity. Like it or not. We do what’s necessary to swim in the direction of acceptance and approval. 

Failing careful attention we are overwhelmed by a constellation of imposed assumptions. Assumptions harden into beliefs. Beliefs, widely held, dictating what’s best for us. 

Eventually we are imprisoned by what we come to believe. We adapt to prison life, rarely if ever noticing our confinement. Bars? What bars? 

Occasionally we glimpse the bars that confine us. We see an interior decorating challenge. There are surely better bars to buy somewhere. Different colors, other materials, more pleasing diameters. We can shop this weekend.

We grow comfortable in our prisons. All we want is more. More of this or that in order to get more comfortable. 

"You and I, as children, were given a drug: it was called approval, it was called appreciation, it was called praise, success, acceptance, popularity ... Awake people break out of this drug."  ~Anthony de Mello

ADDICTION?

The plot thickens.

We have divided our addictions into two categories: acceptable, even vaunted - and ‘highly’ unacceptable. Often, though not always, the unacceptable are defined by their contrast with the acceptable.

While I’m tempted to plunge into the deep vein of addiction (sorry about that), I’ll not let temptation hijack the day. Addiction deserves attention in its own right and wrong. Sufficed to say, for now, conformity and addiction are close relatives.

As Tom Waits said about the difference between paranoia and foresight, “there’s a thin line.” If you’re patient, the addiction dispatch will feature my lunch with a movie star, at The Savoy in London. Steak tartare. Yum.

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Approval, acceptance, and success are powerful influences in our lives. They tend to define our identities. We are ‘judged’ by the company we keep. Success is both a function and an indicator of our perceived desirability. That’s the fatal attraction of ‘rich and famous.’

If we look closely at our more or less compulsive desire to ‘please others’ we see it arises from a frail connection to our sense of UNIVERSAL SELF. We feel small, insignificant, and alone. We feel our little self as dependent on others for sustenance, just as we did in early childhood, when we first entered the approval cycle, when we were legitimately motivated to get survival needs met.  

We experienced then, and perhaps to a lesser extent still do, a primal discomfort with the oneness/individual paradox. As we individuate we feel tension between our oneness with it all, which was our sense of SELF as infants, and the increasing push and pull toward independence and conformity necessary in the so-called grownup world.

This uncomfortable tension can lead to trying too hard to connect, primarily for the sake of acceptance and success, yet true connection, a felt sense of natural, uncoerced interdependence, is of the essence for us to thrive, to live life alive. We’re caught in a double-bind, a harsh dilemma.

Who do we need to please for acceptance and success?

How do we do it and what happens if we don’t?

We want to know, and our culture offers us ways ‘to know.’

We buy in. We conform.

Mike Nichols, while directing Anne Bancroft in The Graduate offered her a character note. He saw Mrs. Robinson as someone who gave up her true life in exchange for wealth and security. It was essential for Anne to embody the anger and regret this choice embedded in Mrs. Robinson.

"That seems to me the great American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it." ~Mike Nichols

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GIVNG UP RATHER THAN IN

Life lived alive asks us to give up our fear based need to know. It asks us to fully accept an inter-connected Universe as our theater. It asks us to live in the spirit of play with open and curious minds, with the courage to relish surprise. 

"Unknowing isn’t ignorance; it’s recognizing a world flush with wonderment and puzzle and mystery." ~Tom Lutz

It takes courage to create a life. To open to all its wondrous possibilities. To reject the insistent tug to conform, to give in to “norms” for societal acceptance. To know how to behave.

Rather, we must embrace NOT KNOWING. To know is the bait, a false promise of security on which we chomp at our peril.

When we open our hearts to ourselves, to each other, and to the abundance of life and wonderment, we will find that courage naturally flows into our actual, felt experience.

“Our lives improve only when we take chances and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.”  ~Walter Anderson

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TRUTH AND TRUST

There is no doubt that a certain degree of conformity is necessary in life lived together on this Earthly plane. Our agreements with regard to safety and health issues are important. Although they are often abrogated. So, there’s that. 

It would be lovely if we shared a vision of robust community steeped in kindness and service. To help and care for one another.

“. . . to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”  ~Kurt Vonnegut

The more we ‘conform’ to ideals that reflect our loving nature the less we feel alone in daily life, and the more likely we are to notice that we are never actually alone. We are always inextricably connected to everything.

We can create vibrant atmospheres in which life giving aspirations at the highest levels will flourish. 

When we serve our souls, we create daily lives that reflect a Universal Theater that sees HUMAN ACTORS playing truthfully.

Most often, in my experience, this version of ‘conformity’ is derided as utopian. The product of imagination, as if imagination was anathema. 

In truth, it is our unique imagination that can see us through the many dangers we are mired in now. 

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Oh Albert . . .

“All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." 

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift".

~Albert Einstein

When we understand the principles of ACTING HUMAN, and practice its fundamentals, we will learn, from lived experience, these essential truths.

Everything changes, including us. We are never the same. We change moment to moment.

Everything connects. We are entirely interconnected in life and death ways. Without trees, we suffocate.

Everything we pay attention to transforms in light of our vision. When we play with the intention to explore and discover truth, we reveal great power. 

“You must overcome the notion that we must be regular. . . it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.” ~Uta Hagen

Inspiration and imagination are birthrights. To belittle or ignore imagination and inspiration, as they are drowning in the persistent din of calls to fear based conformity, is to give in to lifeless living.

While it is not easy, nor comfortable, to live life alive - it is simple. 

Pay attention. 

Practice.

Act Truthfully.

Trust.

Live life as life lives itself.

"Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners — I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous I don't know." ~Wisława Szymborska  Source: The Poet and the World 

The rudimentary question we as HUMAN ACTORS ask, the question that leads to endless curiosity, to a quest that births adventurous lives lived alive, is ‘Who Am I?’

“The question ‘Who am I?’ is not really meant to get an answer. The question ‘Who am I?’is meant to dissolve the questioner.”  ~Ramana Maharshi

“It is a singularity where all the known collapses and disappears. . . what remains is a wild, free, spontaneous, and utterly unknowable aliveness, within the glowing darkness of the Mystery that we ultimately are.”    ~Mauro Bergonzi

Until next time . .

Lights Up!

Jail Breaks Are Fundamental

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The most fundamental (essential; basic; rudimentary; core; primary) ability to nurture in ACTING HUMAN, our ‘brand’ of self-creation, is a practiced capacity to PAY ATTENTION. 

Wholehearted curiosity roots in attention well paid.

Our limited sense of self emanates from reflexive identification with ideas/thoughts. We are magnitudes trapped in jails we’ve been persistently led to make for ourselves.

If we sincerely check in with ourselves we find a self yearning for freedom. A SELF keen to explore a universe of possible selves that live life alive. 

As Joseph Campbell says, we hear a mythic call that urges us to enjoy the “experience of feeling alive.”

“It is very hard to talk about, but when it happens the freedom from one’s usual identity comes as a relief. The contrast with one’s habitual ego ­driven state is overwhelming . . .” ~Mark Epstein  

Paradoxically, with relief comes with a side dish of anxiety. We are unaccustomed to life as a free and protean self. Learning to see this change clearly; learning to appreciate an intentional self-creative process in daily life takes practice centered in our capacity to pay attention.  

The benefits that accrue to us are many and of inestimable value. As we feel them in life lived alive our motivation to create skillfully surges.

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OUR OLD FRIEND COURAGE 

“Creativity takes courage.” ~Henri Matisse

As we pay attention vital questions arise naturally.

First among them (especially at first) is: what risks are we willing to take? The unknown scares us. That’s why we’ve been readily susceptible to the habit of “I know” mind. 

"It’s in risking ourselves — in revealing ourselves to one another — that we become ourselves."           ~Nancy Zapolski

We are never alone. That we appear separate from each other is a vigilantly promoted illusion. We are differentiated yet inseparable. You and me? We can’t have one without the other. 

HELLO! Parts and wholes? 

We are always in relationship. In revealing ourselves to one another, we see ourselves reflected as WHOLE.

Out of fear and in keeping with with cultural norms we have become accustomed to seeing individual identity almost exclusively. This persistent illusion comes at great cost to our wellbeing. 

“We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.”   ~Jacob Bronowski

Our failure to share attention - our lack of willingness to touch one another in heartfelt ways - is strained by a limited sense of self. 

SELF TALK

Quality of attention is tied to story and our role in it as perceived at any particular moment. Most often the roles we play come off the rack. We barely notice and hardly participate.

We accept an assigned identity, and when it gets wobbly, we pretend. We maintain. We perform. We’ve been carefully trained.

Half-hearted behavior is common. In the parlance, we phone it in. After all, we know what happens next and after that, too. We’ve done it thousands of times before - We know. 

“Knowing” mostly happens in language - thoughts, images and beliefs. We forget, if we ever knew, that words and ideas are commonly agreed upon pointers. They guide us when mindfully used. When taken as the actual things they represent they imprison us. When commodified they land us in solitary confinement.

“The map is not the territory.” ~Korzybski

To thrive we must break free of confinements we’ve come to accept all too easily. Step one: Pay sufficient attention to notice, and then pay greater attention. Commit to enlarge your capacity to notice and pay full attention.

It’s not easy to let go of “easily” in favor of creativity. Curiosity and learning comes with risks. Taking risks takes practice. 

Life is complex, like well-made wine, though not necessarily complicated. We tend to complicate our lives so as to avoid surprises, we forfeit living alive rather than experience the shock of recognition. We fear seeing ourselves anew.

When we delve into ACTING HUMAN fundamentals we discover simplicity is key. First and foremost: Simply PAY ATTENTION!

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.” ~Charles Mingus

“My art is about paying attention - about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art.”  ~Robert Rauschenberg

You are not who or what you think you are. You are the whole Universe, bestowed with infinite possibility. Behold the truth of that reality. 

Don’t quite believe that’s true? Humor me. Create yourself “as if” it were true. Let’s see - okay? Start by paying attention.

I recently read a new biography of Francis Ford Coppola, The Path To Paradise, by Sam Wasson. I recommend it without reservation.

Wasson gets to the nub of Coppola’s creative process as a circular engagement with self.

Francis creates “the experience. The experience that re-creates the self. The re-created self creates the work.” Rinse and repeat ad infinitum. 

Take a risk. Coppola takes staggering risks in his work. And in his life. No need to go as far as he does. He’s more than a little nuts.

In ACTING HUMAN terms the ‘work’ is life. One singular sensation.

Experience the shifts that are inevitable in your life and identity. Inhabit the story. Simply pay attention. Feel. With patience, perseverence, and courage your capacity to experience life alive will naturally bloom.

PRACTICE

Make space to rest in contemplation. A cousin of meditation. Find a comfortable place to sit or lay down to play with words as they float through your open mind. 

Start with Curiosity. Allow that this word exists within a cloud of associated words. The cloud floats and changes shape, the associated words float within and without the passing cloud. 

Words can form new clouds and that behave in similar fashion.

Here’s a starter set:

Curious  

Question

Attention

Courage

Heart

Play

Care

Create

Connection

Listen

Generosity

Appreciation

Truth

Kindness

Patience

Practice

Feeling

Sense

Help

Humanity

Warmth

Vulnerability

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Compassion

Amuse

Feel the impulse to explore and learn. Enjoy the kaleidoscopic show. 

There is no wrong way to practice this contemplation. You might take a moment to imagine a child at play. To the extent you can, identify with that child. 

Contemplate for as long as it is fun. No set time.

Repeat daily. Iteration is fundamental to all practice.

With practice you will come to recognize that individual words have no independent life. Language, when serving us well, connects and comes alive. Words and ideas are interdependent and live in created circumstances as vibrant extensions of us in a shared and living Universe.

THE BIG PAYOFF

“Paying attention is the most basic and profound expression of love.”  ~Tara Brach

When you give someone wholehearted attention, listen with all your senses open as Aung Ba suggested, all you need do is meet eye to eye and you will see this truth reflected.

“Simply paying attention allows us to build an emotional connection. Lacking attention, empathy hasn't a chance.”  ~Daniel Goleman

“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”  ~Thich Nhat Hanh

“There is no pure perception — of a flower, of a mountain, of a person. In everything we look at, we see partly a reflection of ourselves — a projection of an internal model seeking to approximate the actuality. If we are conscious enough and unafraid enough of being surprised, we will keep testing the model against reality, incrementally ceding the imagined to the actual. One measure of love — perhaps the deepest measure — is the willingness to remove the projection in order to perceive what is truly there. There is both sorrow and consolation in knowing that although we can only ever glimpse parts of the totality beyond us, we can keep trying to see more clearly in order to love more deeply.” ~Maria Popova

Until Next Time. . .

Lights Up!

Strange Things Are Happening

FLASHBACK to LAST WEEK:

We make creative sense of life by storying.  

Our curiosity propels life stories. We emerge in action, by doing (physically and psychologically) in created circumstances, responding to essential questions like, “who am I? and “what’s next?.” 

Our lives emerge in stories.

We act ourselves alive:

- To find our place in the Universe

- To discover our identities in each new moment

- To recognize our needs and wants

- To let our needs and wants move us

- To form and navigate relationships

- To respond to a persistent flow of changes

- To live life alive

Humans have been storying since the beginning of story time. Over millennia our stories have embedded in Collective Consciousness. Mythic stories transcend the boundaries of time, geography and specific cultural identity. They share themes and congruent structures.

Joseph Campbell was a preeminent explorer and scholar of Myth. He examined the universal functions of myth in various human cultures and mythic figures in a wide range of literatures.

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” ~Joseph Campbell

“The Hero With A Thousand Faces” details the persistent shape of mythic stories. Many writers, especially for the screen, have been influenced explicitly by Campbell’s book. The work of all creatives is informed at the implicate level by virtue of collective consciousness (mythic zeitgeist), including us, HUMAN ACTORS, as we create lives lived alive.

As we’ve discussed ad nauseam, given the commercial character of society at large, amplified by media, which has conditioned us en masse to sell ourselves to ourselves, and schools which have perverted education to serve its own interests, largely in sync with media, we’ve been packaged tightly with little if any impetus to see beyond determined horizons.

Our curiosity has been maimed at inestimable cost to individual and collective wellbeing. Our human birthright, the capacity to see ourselves and the universe anew, has been sacrificed.

“All education is just about making people curious. That’s all it’s about.” ~Stephen Sondheim

We’ve been deprived of true education, one intended to nurture our natural desire to play and learn. Instead we are coerced by promises of “success” and indoctrinated into a world that rewards a belief system comprised of information sets rooted in we “already know.” 

Our appreciation for the mystery of life is disintegrated, while a false sense of security, founded in “we know,” is touted loudly.

“We will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation . . . What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder. . . . Reverence is one of our answers to the presence of mystery.” ~Abraham Heschel

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CURIOSITY MOVES STORY

Story (myth) drives us out of our ordinary world into a new and unknown one. IF we answer THE CALL TO ADVENTURE. 

The above is one among many representations of the Hero’s Journey ‘roadmap.’ The language and visuals differ from one to the other, however, the story steps remain essentially the same. 

Most of us stay in The Ordinary World most of the time. Which is not to say that there are no fascinations possible in Ordinary World. On the contrary, life in Ordinary World is replete with thrills and chills. Alas, of a mostly material kind, they easily substitute for a mythic adventure.

Ordinary World feels safe. We have lots in common with our neighbors as we’ve contracted to accept the belief systems that define order in Ordinary World. We get what we know - dependably. A gated subdivision with neat, guarded borders. We become accustomed to predictable patterns in our unfolding lives. We know our way around. It feels comfortable and secure. Safe. That’s why we stay.

“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”  ~Daniel Kahneman

“Ignorance is bliss.” ~Anon

We don’t often contemplate “don’t know” beyond the amusement of puzzles or what to wear for a special event. Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, Christenings (babies or ships), BIG client sales meets, or a meeting of the Westminster Kennel Club.

Even to consider ‘not knowing’ evinces anxiety, a sense of danger. At the edge of our anxious feelings we bang hard into fear and loathing.

It takes a profound change in our life to spur us to hear THE CALL. A change that we cannot fail to notice or long ignore. The peril or promise is either immediately existential or strongly suggests imminent consequences of an existential kind.

This kind of change, in mythic storytelling terms, is called the ‘inciting incident.’ A disruption in the external world and/or in our psyches that jolts us into a risk taking level of curiosity. 

Risk startles us. It sparks undeniable awareness, the kind of heightened curiosity that can land us outside of our known world. Curiosity that insists we let go of “already know” self to venture into a new and unknown self. Self and world are undivided phenomena. 

We, alas, given the stakes, pay keen attention. 

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THE COURAGE TO ACT

“The higher self gets curious. The conditioned self gets defensive.”  ~Layne & Paul Cutright

Curiosity presents variously, like milkshakes, curiosity comes in a variety of flavors. Take vanilla. (A wonderful flavor that unfortunately connotes pallid characteristics - unfair!)

Vanilla curiosity is common: 

When will the 90” television go on sale? 

Would ‘ya look at THAT bird, is it really an Orange Crested Doodle? 

Is there actually nickel in a nickel? 

I wholeheartedly, as I’ve suggested, endorse vanilla curiosity. I do, however, distinguish it from wholehearted curiosity. (See what I did there?)  

Curiosity of the wholehearted kind has courage at its core. It is heart centered and engenders action that encourages engagement with and moves story. 

Wholehearted curiosity leads to keen awareness and the capacity to live fully in action. 

Wholehearted curiosity augurs change in each and all of us. We, together, can change the world with awareness and courage as inspiration. 

HEARING THE CALL

Listen! 

Most of us listen rarely and inattentively when we do. In daily conversation we move faster than meaning. We rehearse our preconceived answers and halt our half-hearted listening before our conversational partners have reached the end of what they intend to communicate, assuming they intend wholeheartedly. We slide past each other consistently for lack of listening.

Literal ‘listening’ deficits are symptomatic of a larger lacking in our capacity to pay attention on any level for fear that listening may challenge our solid sense of self. 

“Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness.” ~Rollo May (p. 100)

My lifelong friend, Edward Kearney, taught me much about listening. He, ironically, was for most of his years an incessant talker, often making little to no sense that I could discern. Sometimes he had something brilliant to say. I did my best to remain alert, though I regularly fell short. I’ve fallen asleep while ‘listening’ to him, awakening hours later to what felt like an uninterrupted continuation of his talk. 

Later in life, after many twists and turns, Edward undertook a deep practice in body work. His genius was evident. He, with diligent practice, became a Master bodyworker, an adept improviser moving effortlessly through complex modalities.

The secret? Listening. He explained the he listened fully, with all of his senses and a clear intention to connect with whomever he worked, to heal and elevate consciousness for the benefit of all of us.

He lived in wholehearted curiosity. 

His practice and study of bodywork in Thailand led inevitably to a resounding CALL TO ADVENTURE. Edward spent his last ten years in Burma as an ordained Buddhist monk, U Aung Ba.

When at last he decided to disrobe (leave his monastery in Burma) and return to a lay practitioners life the U.S. he had a massive stroke on his returning flight.

I met him in Atlanta where he was evacuated to Grady Memorial Hospital. He was paralyzed on one side and globally aphasic (unable to speak). As his health proxy, I, together with the Neuro team, decided that the best course was Hospice.

There, for ten days, we sat together in silence. Listening wholeheartedly. Engaged in wholehearted curiosity. Living the story.

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PRACTICE

Simply notice the quality of your listening. Notice what you notice. Engage in unfolding story with wholehearted curiosity. Allow yourself the attention necessary to move with the story.

Smile. No need to force anything. When you notice your attention wandering, gently allow it to come back into the present story. Feel a sense of ease in living and listening now. Let yourself delight in simple listening with all your senses open.

If you wish, set aside a few moments near the end of your day for reflection on the process. Make notes if you like.

Share what you will in comments, so like Aung Ba, we heal and elevate consciousness for the benefit of us all. Courage begets courage. 

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Until next time..

Lights Up! 

Who Knows What’s Next?

“I like living, it gives me something to do.”

I’m not sure if I came up with that bit of wit or not. I’ve checked the most likely suspects: Steven Wright, Mitch Hedberg, and Jackie Vernon. I’ve exercised due diligence, Your Honor.

Could it be Rodney? 

Doesn’t matter, the line elides nicely into today’s dispatch.

The ‘something’ we live to do is ‘to do.’ Remember? Acting is doing. We live as active verbs. As we verb, we story ourselves alive. We emerge from mystery as an expression of Universal life-force.

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” ~Muriel Rukeyser

We co-create a series of events we call our life. Stories that, when told (selectively) in reflection constitute a narrative. 

No narrative, no obituary. 

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FLASHBACK: Last Sunday

We make creative sense of life by storying, we use curiosity and imagination to let life story emerge in action:

- To find our place in the Universe

- To discover our identities in each new moment

- To recognize our needs and wants

- To let out needs and wants move us

- To form and navigate relationships

- To respond to a persistent flow of changes

- To live life alive

Which is to say, we (more or less) spontaneously discover ourselves as we do our lives. We story ourselves into life.  

When we story as actors, playing ourselves with creative intention, our natural curiosity quickens. 

We see more clearly. We live, actively doing, while keenly aware of what we are doing. We act and observe all at once. 

We live stories within stories. Conscious of self, though not self conscious. A festival of holons and fractal frenzy.

We story in loops. What we see in story presages what we do, and what we do presages the story we see.

As we pay attention to what we do and the created circumstances that give rise to what we do, we create ourselves again and again in each new moment.

"Acting is the life of the human soul receiving its birth through art."

~Richard Boleslavsky

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STORY BASICS

It’s fair to say that anyone who has ever studied writing whether in the context of fiction or non-fiction (there’s a thin line at best) has been taught that all story consists of elements. Commonly referred to as the 5 W’s.

Who?

What?

Where?

When?

Why?

As actors we write stories in the medium of life. We discover them as they unfold in ordinary and extraordinary events. Often hard to tell ordinary and extraordinary events apart as they arise. We may have to wait for the obit.

Check in on your daily life. In each ’situation’ (a story within your larger story) aren’t you asking, in subtle or not so subtle ways, ‘who am I?’ 

Perhaps, in familiar circumstances you assume your identity.

Let’s say you went to medical school. You assume you’re a doctor. Are you the same doctor you were this morning, before you had tacos for lunch? Yesterday, no matter what you ate? Last year, before the malpractice suit?  

Likely you’re a different doctor as you meet the patient after time with the young couple you’ve just had to share a dire diagnosis.

The given circumstances or actable elements (what, when, why, where) and how how you contextualize them, changes how you see you. A name or title is never adequate to express who you are. Identity changes in  story context (you in relationship) and in story time (when).

Why did you go to medical school? Was your family influential in the decision? In other words, do you have a Jewish, Asian, or Indian mother? Are you a third generation doc, or the first one in an immigrant family? Were you a sick child who spent years as a hospital patient? 

How does the exposition (some combination of the various circumstance set out above) impact the doctor you are now - right now.

As HUMAN ACTORS we get to explore (an active verb) these questions in the process of doing. We don’t stop doctoring to ask questions in a literal way. Questions live in us. We sense them in a mind/body way.

When we remain alert to mind/body states and adjust creatively, we encourage enhanced intuition born of empathy, curiosity, and imagination. 

Practice:

Slow down. We often don’t notice changes because we spin too fast. Our minds go a mile a minute. We rush ourselves into numbness. So much to do. No time to catch a noticeable moment.

You will notice shifts. Maybe once or twice a day. Slow down. Easy does it.

A place you’ve frequented will look or feel unlike before. The light seems to have changed. Notice.

Someone you know well will look slightly different. They might behave in a way that feels slightly other than what you’ve come to expect, and you may feel differently in their company. Notice.

These modest shifts are not uncommon. Notice. 

Please don’t feel obligated to make a melodrama of the moment. Simply notice.

The more you notice thought/feeling shifts the more likely you are to grow more alert and aware. As you grow in awareness you will increasingly notice shifts in your identity. With practice, you will come to appreciate the changing nature of connections and how you see them. Your story sense will enlarge.

One ’small’ noticed moment at a time. 

These observations can test us. Early on they can unsettle and unnerve us, especially true in tenuous times such as the ones in which we now live.

An Examined Life Is Not Easy 

All lives lived alive call for courage. Courage flows from a full, vulnerable, and engaged heart. 

It helps to remember we are not alone. We are all connected to everything. We are the Universe revealing itself to itself, to each of us, and through us as HUMAN ACTORS, as we play in the Universal Theater.

“Every time we train our most sophisticated tools upon the central questions of our existence — Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? — the answer comes back clearer: Everyone and Everywhere” ~James Bridle

It’s difficult to know for sure whether we’re coming or going. The playwright, Tom Stoppard, suggests we “look at every exit as an entrance somewhere else.”

Entrances and exits? Two sides of the same journey. Impossible to tell the difference. A polarity. Take your pick. 

Vital to life lived alive is a comfortable relationship with ‘not knowing’ and ‘new beginnings.’ 

Each moment of life turns our story in new directions. We are born anew in every now. The plot, such as it is, swirls in endless motion. It is incumbent upon us to slow down and breathe. To pay attention. 

In awareness we live with courage and wonder.

“Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.” ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As we live with less fear in ongoing stories we bring vitality to our lives. The deep impulse that animates our story, and the journey it takes us on, is a search for truth as a sense of direction. As guidance. Not a static representation of truth; the living truth, ALWAYS in motion. Truth that moves us. Living truth shifts in dynamic relationship to our unfolding stories. Fresh truths bubble up in a perpetual stream of 'aha' moments that point us toward lives lived alive.

We live and flourish in questions. Answers are questions masquerading as final forms in an appeal to our fears and insecurity. They are temporary at best. Life’s weather will soon enough peel away the veneer of answers to reveal the questions that they cover.

Notice. 

“Becoming intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our hearts more tender. . . . By not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what's happening, we begin to access our inner strength.”

~Pema Chodron

Viewing the universe as a complex of stories that ask life giving questions encourages us to live more intentional lives. By embracing the power of story, we can connect more deeply with ourselves, others, and the world around us - leading to richer, kinder, and more generous creativity.

“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life so much as they are looking for the experience of being alive." ~Joseph Campbell

“When we are not sure, we are alive.” ~Graham Greene

Keep on storying, certain of uncertainty, with courage and awareness. Plumb the mystery.

We discover ourselves, each other, and the whole Universe in the felt experience of life lived alive.

Until next time..

Lights Up!

Terms of Engagement

We live in a sea of screens. 

Surrounded. 

Inundated. 

Drowned? 

The undertow of technology and algorithmic commerce sucks us in and under. The ability to identify us and squeeze us into identity ghettos is staggering. 

The more we locate in categories, the easier we are commodified. As commodities we are easily sold back to ourselves. 

Media says:

“We know how to keep an eye on you.”

“We know who you think you are.”

“We know you are dissatisfied with you.”

“We know where it hurts”

“We know why.”

“We know what you want to ease the pain.”

“We know exactly what it takes to ease your pain.”

“We know how to find new pain points.”

“We know how to rinse and repeat.”

These are the circumstances of our lives when we allow mediated screen based technologies and social conformity to establish the rules of engagement around core questions of identity. 

We have been carefully conditioned to comply with institutional and social ‘suggestions.’ 

As promised - Vance Packard!

He was a Pennsylvania born “farm boy” turned journalist. Packard exposed the tactics and ethics that pervaded Mad Men culture with the 1957 publication of “The Hidden Persuaders,” which has sold more than a million copies.

“This book is about the large-scale efforts being made, often with impressive success, to channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions, and out=r thought processes by the use of insights gleaned from psychiatry and the social sciences. Typically these efforts take place beneath our level of awareness; so that the appeals which move us, are often, in a sense, hidden.”  ~VP

Packard enumerated the Hidden Needs. 

- Identity

- Self Worth

- Affiliation

- Creative Expression

- Emotional Comfort/Happiness

- Love

- Power

- Immortality

In the aggregate we see that Packard’s Hidden Needs are elements of self identity. The ad makers and the ad machine, better known as media, recognized that we are Metaphoric Mammals. 

The MIC methodically mastered language and image so that we would see one thing as another in ways that suited their interests. Ultimately we were led to see ourselves as Consumers writ large, capable of meeting our needs, as determined by the Media Industrial Complex, with the products on offer and the means used to sell them. They packaged psychological needs as wants satisfied by products.

Status symbols like big, solid, fast cars and admired clothing to appeal to our needs for self worth; our need to attract attention. Our need to feel important, accepted, and secure. To see ourselves seen as glowing, sought by the crowd.

They saw the close connection between creative and erotic desires, using sexual images and language to seduce us to buy, buy, buy. 

Perhaps the biggest fear we have is of death, THE end. A feeling of primal danger, a dark vision of disappearing into nothingness. 

Ads fashioned to play to this deep insecurity with age-defying products and spry older people enjoying life are in regular rotation. They cast vibrant young people to help us avoid thinking about death and encourage us to recapture a lost youth.

The Mad Men knew that the key to their success was not so much in persuading us, but in conditioning us to persuade ourselves. To forge our identities using repeated impressions designed to pierce and stick in our Metaphoric Mammal minds. To firmly establish in us a limited, compliant, and fierce consumerist identity.

They have largely succeeded! 

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TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT

I bet dollars to donuts that the first engagement that pops to top of most minds is -

Love and Marriage

Love has been commodified to the hilt. There is a Wedding Industrial Complex (WIC) is at work, full force, 24/7. It’s focused on Compound Annual Growth Rate. They’re not sentimental. They do hard, cold numbers.

A $414 Billion Global Industry Seeing Healthy Growth

Let’s start with the 10,000 foot view on size and growth:

The global wedding industry will reach $414 billion by 2030 according to Allied Market Research. The 4.8% CAGR from 2018-2030 signals healthy, sustained expansion.

Over the same period, the broader U.S. wedding services market will grow at a 5.4% CAGR to an expected $79 billion worth by 2030 according to IBISWorld.

Zooming in on 2023, U.S. wedding services revenue is projected at $70 billion already. That would mark a 21% increase over 2021’s $57.9 billion.

Bottom Line: Both globally and domestically, expect strong ongoing expansion of the wedding industry. We’re seeing no slowdown in couples wanting unforgettable celebrations. 

The WIC, which pimps out love, is but one, a quick example of an all encompassing array of business interests that have cluttered our way of life. We are in the clutches of a society with a powerful media voice. It shouts (sometimes in whispers) without notice or surcease it exerts a powerful pull.  

How’s this working for you? Are you thriving? 

Do you feel truly whole? Or, do you have a gnawing sense that ‘something’ is missing?

Are you comfortable? Content?

It’s easy to get distracted by what’s expected of us.

Nevertheless, I want to remind you that we, as humans, have the natural capacity to change the terms of engagement. 

With a shift in perspective, we can revision engagement as agreement, the terms of which are negotiable with practiced awareness and creative action. 

We can change how we agree to see ourselves, each other, and how we forge connections to life-force so as to live in (and of) the world together.

We can agree to immerse in a living Universe with rapt attention, with wonder, with an easy sense of belonging. With identities that emerge from free play and true discovery. We can reject imprisonment.

We can remind ourselves that change is the essence of life lived alive.   

“The truth of change can be seen at every level: the birth and death of galaxies, the rise and fall of civilizations, the change of climate and weather — and the momentary changes of our lived experience.” ~Joseph Goldstein

Life affirming change is what ACTING HUMAN practice promises. 

We do not, in our practice, push for particular changes to remedy something that we see as wrong with us. We do not play a finite self-improvement game. We play life as infinite players.

Our intention is simple: to engage with life as emergent experience, always changing from moment to moment. To trust our lives lived alive in awareness. To sense our timeless belonging in a free, swirling, star studded Universe within endless Galaxies.   

“The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.”

~Alan Watts

“I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man’s life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.”

~Martin Buber

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MY BARBER SHOP EPIPHANY

Among my earliest memories, if not my first memory, is of a haircut. The contender is an evocative view of pastries in Pakula’s Bakery near Parkchester. Both are profound. 

When I was two or so my father took me see Mario, in his barber shop a few doors down from Jack’s Diner in bustling Westchester Square. It was while seated on a ‘pony’ chair that I had a mystical experience. 

As Mario cut and combed I noticed the Universe. It was spread out in all directions without end. No matter where I looked the Universe, including me and my pony, appeared at all angles and on every horizon.

Pure wonder. Spellbinding. Timeless.

In the fullness of ‘ordinary’ time I’ve come to know what happened, which doesn’t diminish the miracle of what I saw as a spectacular Universal vision. It remains a mystical experience.

Seen in a rational way it was what we’d commonly call an illusion.

I was centered between two walls of mirrors. All was reflected and re-reflected ad infinitum revealing Universal truth to an open child.

“What is meant by the term ‘illusion’ is that phenomena do not exist independently of other phenomena, that their appearance of independent existence is illusory. This is all that is meant by ‘illusion,’ that something is not really there.”

~Dalai Lama

Far be it from me to fly in the face of His Holiness, rather I am inspired by him to extend his language and expand our understanding of illusion.

Reality is here AND there, a matter of perception.

The stuff of magic. We live in mystery. It is only the quality of our attention, the way we see in any given moment, and the circumstances that create what we see that inflects our identity and exerts influence on what we seem to see.

Magic relies on misdirection; diverted attention.

To see one way not the other. Wisdom/Vision calls us to see ALL simultaneously. To see how the trick works as we are the nexus, both the magic and the magician.

To see clearly, as I did at two, that both/and gives rise to Universal vision, was and is a break through. A life changing change. We live as reflections in a mystery that bestows on us vast creative freedom.

I was, just a few years hence, to learn from learning to play the trumpet that subtle shifts make a BIG difference. There are break throughs awaiting in every truly lived moment.

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ACTING HUMAN: A METAPHORIC PRACTICE

To engage life as actors playing ourselves, while alert to and intentional in what we are doing, is a practice rooted in skillful use of imagination.

We live in an unfathomable mystery.

We make creative sense of it all by storying. The ways in which we use curiosity and imagination to let story emerge is:

- How we find our place in the Universe

- How we discover our identities in each new moment

- How we recognize our needs and wants

- How we let out needs and wants move us

- How we form and navigate relationships

- How we respond to a persistent flow of changes

- How we live our lives alive

Acting is a learnable craft. So is life. They map over one another with almost complete congruence.

ACTING HUMAN is an innovative turn on mindfulness practice. A turbo-charged, always available version, a fascinating meditation in and on daily life. A way to play in in the realm of non-dual consciousness AND harmonize with our culturally conditioned brethren .

No woo-woo, weird costumes, nor dogmatic rituals.

ACTING HUMAN shows us a way to use attention to nurture curiosity and imagination in the service of creating life lived fully alive. To break free of conformity and servitude to commercial pressures. 

Rather, it urges us to serve, in daily life, for the benefit of ourselves AND others. To enliven the qualities of empathy, compassion, and kind action. To elevate the level of sanity and humanity.

We are multitudes held in confinement by sanctioned identities. Our tightly bound roles cause pain that gets exploited. The more we try to escape the pain by ordinary means the tighter the bind. The greater the pain.

It is hard to talk about, but when it happens the freedom from one’s tight, motionless identity comes as a welcome relief.

Life is like an unfolding story that we read and interpret, while identifying with the stars (i.e., gods) and immersing ourselves in the drama. When we start to notice this, life becomes lighter. The monotony fades and the magic begins. For when we turn our attention to our bodies, feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness, we find that we are woven of the quixotic threads of ongoing stories. For only such a self can create and be created. A fixed, intractable one is as good as dead. 

~Stephan Batchelor  

We can only know ourselves in relationship. Not the least of which is our relationship to our momentary identity. Until identity flows in a life giving way we are stuck, and as Stephan Batchelor puts it, “as good as dead.”

As letting go and flowing with story becomes our daily way, we will find more fun, greater buoyancy, and evanescent joy in all we do and in everyone with whom we live.

Alas..

Contentment is wanting what you need,

frustration is needing what you want

and you can't always get what you want,

but if you try sometime

you find you get what you need.

(isn't that right Mr. Jagger?)

A sale is the purchase of a service or product

to gratify a want,

fueled often by the erroneous belief

that it will give the buyer what they need.

Therefore...

sell people what they want,

but give them what they need,

so they'll be around long enough

to get them where they really want to go.

(c) 2007 Mark Goulston

Until next time..

Lights Up!

Game Time

When I began teaching in The S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 2000 my course ‘load’ - traditional academic jargon - included a sophomore offering, TRF235 - Principles and Practices. Described in the current catalogue thusly:

Origins and dynamics of corporate structures, revenue models, content, distribution, and regulation in the television, radio, film, and interactive media industries.

There was an assigned curricula, which, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, I largely ignored. For instance, I skipped Marconi, while substuting macaroni. And I no doubt sang the praises of milkshakes.

It took two years of teaching before I ‘officially’ abandoned all academic rigamarole, most importantly even feigned testing and grades. Initially, while not actually adhering to the ‘rules,’ I did give a laughing nod in their direction. My students ‘knew’ they were safe and that they were learning by way of shared story, no threats nor rank pulled, and tons of fun. 

I did ‘require’ a final essay completed at home. Any length, any form. The prompt for which was: “Should the responsibility for television regulation fall under the purview of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)?

While it was a kind of whimsical (though pertinent) question then, it is a sublimely ridiculous one now.

That horse (a name for heroin - coincidence?) has long ago galloped out of the stable.

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Screens Get Us High

The phenomenon of screen effects on global culture, perhaps especially in the West where screen use is ubiquitous, are profound. 

The effects, manifested in brain/perception/consciousness altering impacts that far transcend the inimically designed commercial content alone.

Television had and has the inherent capacity to induce hypnotic/hypnogogic states, making viewers extremely susceptible to a wide variety of suggestions. 

Early on in television history, as Vance Packard revealed in The Hidden Persuaders, a rabid advertising industry, sought to plumb the psyches of viewers so as to seduce them with ads. Ads that ‘scientifically’ manipulated viewers in altered states to behave in the interests of business with singular corporate motivations. The EIC and advertisers were and are hellbent on driving our attention into a consumerist ditch born of our inattention, altered minds and as Packard defined them, our ‘hidden needs.’ 

Much more in future dispatches on needs and wants, not only key to advertising effectiveness, but also vital elements in the actors craft which underpins ACTING HUMAN. 

Our attention, and how we use it, is of the essence. To nurture the quality of our attention is a prime tenet of ACTING HUMAN practice. PAY ATTENTION! 

To live life out loud, to make it “our” truly conscious experience, we must, as a first step, learn to pay attention, to enlarge awareness. 

We need to pay attention while paying attention to paying attention. As we engage in an endless loop of awareness. Keen awareness fuels life-igniting energy that propels us to live life alive.

PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT AND HOW WE PAY ATTENTION. When we pay attention with keen intention we begin to ACT HUMAN. 

We transcend reflexive and conditioned behavior by use of creativity expressed as actors craft. We live our lives alive in connection to universal energies, rather than as mechanical and easily manipulated semi-automatons. 

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Play Ball

Given the above as background for the nonce, and a promise to return for a deeper dig, lets move on to news as entertainment, more particularly, new presented as sports. 

The news appears in the context of the entertainment industrial complex (EIC), which is in effect a vast complex of ads for ads. The EIC attracts us, cops our attention and sells it in packages of eyeballs watching and asses in seats. We are the product. 

It sells us to advertisers. Actually, it sells us to us by selling us with ‘new and improved’ identities replete with needs and wants that conform to economic and/or social prerogatives that play in concert with insane and inhumane corporate visions of social organization and economic interest.

“We have devalued the singular human capacity to see things whole in the totality of psychic, emotional and moral dimensions, and we have replaced this with faith in the powers of technical calculation.” ~Neil Postman

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FLASHBACK TO PART I

WE IDENTIFY WITH THE MEDIATED WORLD

..what we see and how we see it makes strong and compelling impressions, influencing who we think we are and how we connect with each other, coloring events in and around every daily moment, and shaping the world in which we live.

To the great extent that media disconnects us from ourselves and each other, sows discontent, arouses heightened emotion based on imposed ’truths’ not actually experienced in life, and teaches us to keep score and predict outcomes - it does a grievous disservice to our sanity and humanity.

When we take to heart and see what is portrayed on television and in other media as an ‘official version of reality,’  without intentional and practiced awareness, we sacrifice our birthright to co-create in the Universal Theater.

AND WE’RE BACK

We have a compelling tendency to see news as a more or less “official version of realty.” It’s where we find out what’s going on in a world we can’t see directly. Our erstwhile scouts, expert observers and interpreters of events beyond our ken, report news from far flung places and in the voices of people with whom they have special connections owing to their status as media messengers held in high repute.

The players in the news game were always putting on a show. We imputed the notion of exclusive and bonafide reality to their performances. They had an intersecting array of interests, political, economic, social, and personal to advance - and there was the necessity of getting a show on the air that created a home for it all. We took it as truth expressed forthrightly. After all, it was a new and compelling technology, and we were high.

With a widely held public belief in news as fully accepted reality, Roone Arledge had a solid foundation upon which to add a sports overlay for personal glory and corporate profit. 

He amplified the visual and narrative storytelling to grab more eyeballs and asses. 

Nowadays, if you turn the sound off, can you tell the difference between a shows on ESPN and MSNBC?

Roone changed not only the storyline but also the identity story we tell ourselves. He changed our relationship to the news story. We saw the world anew and, and as always, when the world looks new it’s because we see it through new eyes.

We were bestowed new identities even before we got to the commercials. 

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SPORTS SENSE

Finite Games are at the core of sports events. 

You surely recall James Carse. He discerns that there are two kinds of games, infinite and finite. 

Finite games can occur within infinite games; infinite games cannot occur within finite games.

Infinite games are flexible and ever changing, there are no hard and fast rules. Finite games play within boundaries. Infinite games play with boundaries, they encourage change and improvisation. 

Infinite games are defined by cooperation and continuation. Finite games play to a conclusion in time with winners and losers based on predetermined and immutable rules.

When we see events in the ‘real’ world portrayed on a news show with a sports orientation, we come to see our lives - given that ‘the medium is the message’ - as contained by boundaries and predetermined rules that play out in clock time, yielding winners and losers.

This narrative is consistent with our preconceived cognitive commitments (Karen Langer in Mindfulness); beliefs we’ve been conditioned to accept in school and that accord with dominant social constructions. The finite sports narrative does not challenge the ‘common sense’ of how life works. 

“Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.” ~Thomas Carlyle

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SET RULES

As the unknown gives rise to fear, makes us uncomfortable, and heightens our insecurity, we take comfort in known rules, they are absolute and, therefore, place a false though convincing emphasis on security, permanence, and safety. So, we find the sports narrative far more attractive than living in a world of mystery and surprise.

The rub is that only with a practiced and welcome response to surprise and insecurity can we live life alive. The only security possible is a trusting embrace of insecurity, a bountiful mystery with generous sprouts of creative opportunity.

"Don't be worried about insecurity. Death will make everything secure. While alive, enjoy insecurity." ~Confucius

TIME AND COURAGE

A sports orientation to life tends to solidify time. When examined closely, with true curiosity and care, we see clearly that time is a construction of convenience. 

We’ve used and been used by clock time as a means of uniform coordination. It is not a natural phenomena, although it originated in the organic relationship of the sun to the earth. With passing time we’ve commodified time.

The most telling example is in transportation history. Powerful railroad companies in the 1880s needed to collapse thousands of time zones in the US and Canada in a manageable way so as to clean up a costly scheduling mess. They invented and imposed a four time zone system that very closely resembles what exists today.

Call a friend in a different time zone. Listen to a television show together. The folly of clock time will reveal itself in stark relief. Try it, you’ll like it.

While the illusion of fixed time may comfort some of us, it is antithetical to life lived alive. HUMAN ACTORS thrive on rhythm and courage.

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.  ~Raymond Lindquist

“Humans feel time. Clocks tell time. One from the heart and the other heartless.”  ~Dubin

WINNERS AND LOSERS

A sports orientation to life foments a world view in which competition has greater value than cooperation. Granted, in team sports there is some value in playing together, one team plays together in opposition to another team. The goal in all sports is for someone or a team to win while some other one or another team loses.

Without putting too fine a point on it, we can conceive of competition as a form of cooperation. When finite players play within an infinite context for instance. However, that is not the overriding purpose of a tennis match or football game.

When emphasis on competition in news is commonplace, we are more likely to see flesh and blood humans in critical circumstances as in opposition, making wellbeing and peace subject to competition instead of cooperation and adaptation. 

This vision justifies insanity and inhumanity. 

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There are no doubt difficult and complex matters that we must take account of in a modern and far less than utopian world. Nevertheless, a competitive spirit, with winner and loser outcomes, does nothing to foster sanity and humanity.

The war metaphor amplified in sports/news coverage and the bastardization of courage is pernicious. 

“Creativity takes courage.” ~Henri Matisse

“What can we do in our lives, through the decisions we make, the choices we make to tip the scales in the world away from fear and toward love.”

~Vivek Murthy, M.D.

IT’S A RACE

In a certain sense all competitive sports implies a race. Speed counts in every sport. So does measurement. How far? How fast?

As news presents with a sports orientation there’s an underlying and exaggerated sense of hurry. A false urgency that crushes all impulses to curiosity.

News programs are timed. They’re built of blocks or segments. How often do we see an anchor, up against a ‘commercial break,’ urge a fast response. “We have twenty seconds.” Guests who get booked regularly know how to do “twenty seconds.” 

Measurements of all kinds - best, most important, critical to outcome (speculations), and the like are predominant features in news coverage.

This echoes grades and highlights a limited sense of achievement. It overestimates individual value in our culture. It undervalues interdependence.

It separates us from ourselves and each other. 

The news presents a pervasive picture of a hurried world where individuals are vying for winning spots.

Anchors are ranked. We know which time slots have greatest value. We know how much money the most vaunted anchors (like athletes) are paid. 

The implicit values are sick. They do not inform us in any way that remotely contributes to our individual or social wellbeing and growth. 

Media are disoriented by corporate motives. They lead us to feel lost and fearful only to meet their own profit driven ends.

The hyped style within which impressions of vital information distributed with the intention of allowing us involvement in the unfolding of essential and existential matters in world news, in the absence of which we cannot possibly be fully alive in the world. A scam.

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“It seems to me the great American danger we're all in is that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it." ~Mike Nichols

SLOW DOWN TO ACT HUMAN

Set aside the RAT RACE to WIN. It in no way enhances our creativity, or our capacity for empathy, compassion, kindness, gratitude, or love. 

"It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way."

~Rollo May

Slow down to make room for heart felt curiosity. Have the courage of to live. Living any life takes courage.

When we listen in a whole way, using all our senses simultaneously with a keenly focused intention to absorb raw experience, especially of each other, prior to language, category, or concept, we truly ACT HUMAN. 

Until next time..

Lights Up!

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Norm Fox (not pictured above} was a friend. I was but one of a colossal coterie. Harvard, Columbia University, and The London School of Economics are a few of the coordinates where he magnetized the eclectic array of people that filled his orbit.

The man was a bonafide polymath. From his Los Angeles Times obit (July 15, 2010) -

He had an encyclopedic knowledge of art, music, opera, world history and cultures, literature, film and television, gastronomy, enology, languages, and so much more. He memorized every line of his favorite film, Truffaut's "Jules and Jim", which he saw over a hundred times. A self-taught painter, he had several art gallery shows.

That’s less than the half of it. He was a curious man in every sense. 

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WIDER HORIZONS FOR ME

Fox wrote award winning copy for major advertising agencies, and later award winning scripts for prime time television shows. That’s where he connected with Norman Steinberg, my longtime pal and sometime collaborator, whose tv/film credits are - well, Blazing Saddles to start. 

Steinberg drew me into the Norman/Norman axis. Somehow I’d missed Norman Fox at the London School of Economics. Probably owing to a coincidence; while he was there I was aware of London though entirely unaware of its School of Economics; I was fully focused on the many demands attending to my studies at the New York School of Gigs.

In time I grew a bit more knowledgeable in matters that extended beyond trumpet playing gigs, and I lost my chops. Who needs gigs when you can’t play? 

“Everything changes.” ~Suzuki Roshi

While I was at this stage long involved in meditation, wisdom traditions, states of consciousness, philosophy, psychology, theater, several musical idioms and, of course, milk shakes - I knew next to nothing about the machinations of major league show business. The Entertainment Industrial Complex.

Musicians live in a show-biz adjacent neighborhood.

I’d had something of a primer in my time with ‘Midday Live,’ a daily chat show in New York where I snuck glimpses into the gaping belly of the beast.

Life changed. I had moved to Los Angeles and into Belly Central, living amid the challenges facing a newly anointed Hollywood denizen with all the associated churning. 

Norman Fox hosted regular luncheons with carefully curated guest lists. Among his eclectic endeavors he hosted a talk show on KABC radio centered around travel and dining. Ergo, he made deals with the best restaurants in town where he would assemble notable guests, among which I was not infrequently noted.

His modus operandi was to pose a provocative question for each of us to address in the course of courses.

As luck would have it (never underestimate luck) I was well schooled in ‘swinging’ conversation by great storytellers at The Copper Rail, a bar and soul food joint directly across Seventh Avenue from The Metropole, a jazz venue that opened onto the street. Non-stop, continuous music.

World class players of traditional jazz and swing influenced music alternated between sets on a long narrow bandstand behind the Metropole bar, and the Copper Rail bar across the street.

Only a child of nine, seen from the bandstand in the throes of animated antics, expressions of ardent appreciation for what “the cats” were playing. They were compelled to pay attention to me. Especially when asked why I was there and my response was, “I’m a trumpet player.”

It started with Henry ‘Red’ Allen, a fellow trumpet player and New Orleans contemporary of Louis Armstrong, whom I would mimic on the street. He had a signature high sign that I would shoot back at him anytime he looked my way. He got a kick out of that. 

Slowly I got to know all the guys. They would generously invite me to sit with them, buy me a coke to sip, as they relaxed between sets in a booth across the street.

There I absorbed amusing, often hilarious, richly textured, and rhythmic conversation. The greatest musicians are great storytellers, whether in a booth with booze or on the bandstand with horns.

I was ready for Norman Fox. And he was ready for me.

Hooray to the Copper Rail days. They were sweet.

Through the good offices of Norman Fox I embarked on a deep education at he highest level in the workings of ‘electronic media,’ as it was called many years later in my early days of professing at the Newhouse School. 

As the world and its media has shifted and continues to shift swiftly with quake like rumblings, the grounding I got then has served me well. I don’t pretend to know exactly what’s happening, as cultivating ‘don’t know’ mind is a rudiment of ACTING HUMAN practice. I am, nevertheless, a keen observer of media upheaval in this tumultuous time. 

As HUMAN ACTORS, living mediated lives, it is critical that we have an engaged sense of its impacts as we co-create ourselves in this fast changing world. 

LETS GO TANGO

Not only was Norman erudite in matters of entertainment business, his “significant other and best friend,” as he described her, was part of the package.

Her name is Loreen Arbus, the daughter of Leonard Goldenson, who was President and Chairman of the American Broadcasting Company. 

Goldenson was a critical force in the formation of ABC, he turned it into a media conglomerate, and then played an outsized role in new programming strategies and media synergy, igniting changes that would have implications lasting until and into this moment. 

Loreen, was more than just Leonard’s daughter, she was the first woman to head programming for two national cable networks. She lead Showtime and Lifetime to prominence. She is, also, a world renowned Argentinian Tango dancer and choreographer.

Loreen is best known today as a philanthropist committed to help girls, women and those with disabilities.  

Norman and Loreen, a curious couple, in every sense. Me, an oddity in Hollywood, a musician from the Bronx morphed into a coveted writer/director/producer of primetime television - Fox, Arbus, and Dubin were copacetic.

THE VIEW FROM INSIDE

In brief, here’s what I learned.

ABC was for years a poor cousin to CBS and NBC. Goldenson was not a happy camper. Slow progress toward parity in the 60s, and 70’s was accelerated when Roone Arledge, who had run ABC Sports with sterling success since 1968, was in 1977, handpicked by Goldenson to add News to his portfolio in an effort to parlay his golden touch in Sports programming (sorry about that) to the then deeply troubled, ratings disaster and money leaking News division.

News had been cordoned off and protected from commercial pressure to support ‘integrity.’ It often operated as a loss leader. To the extent News had an economic impact on programming it was in so far as the News audience tended to stay for the night, thereby bolstering primetime ratings. You had to get up to change the channel. ABC News was, as Roone Arledge came to the helm, at an all-time low. 

Arledge was responsible for Wide World of Sports, and Monday Night Football. Both enormous hits spitting out piles of profit.

He won ten Emmys for ABC’s Olympic Coverage to add luster to the glory of ABC.

Roone did what he knew how to do. He created World News Tonight in the image of Wide World of Sports, garnering a ratings and economic windfall. 

Eventually the News businesses at all the networks followed, then fractured, giving rise to Cable Networks. 

CNN, an exception, was a bold play by Ted Turner, independent of any network affiliation. It served as proof of concept. He started in his father’s billboard business, got into local stations, then satellite distribution before launching the first 24- hour-a-day All News Network with international reach.

Turner was an adventurer, notably a competitive sailor. A sportsman.

Now we have MSNBC and FOX News. CBS has dipped in and out of cable; it offers a streaming service today.

Roone Arledge showed that News could turn a profit when presented ‘as if’ sports. Turner noticed the profit potential, as did NBC and FOX.

Today we live in a culture where News media flashes on ubiquitous screens, reflecting in appearance and content, that everything and anything happening anywhere in the world is best seen through the lens of sports, broadly defined. All in the interest of business advantage and profit.

WE IDENTIFY WITH THE MEDIATED WORLD

As we’ve discussed, what we see and how we see it makes strong and compelling impressions, influencing who we think we are and how we connect with each other, coloring events in and around every daily moment, and shaping the world in which we live.

To the great extent that media disconnects us from ourselves and each other, sows discontent, arouses heightened emotion based on imposed ’truths’ not actually experienced in our immediate life, and teaches us to keep score and predict outcomes - it does a grievous disservice to our sanity and humanity.

When we take to heart and see what is portrayed on television and in other media as an ‘official version of reality,’  without intentional and practiced awareness, we sacrifice our birthright to co-create in the Universal Theater.

To ACT HUMAN depends on seeing finite games, like corporate media businesses, in the meta-context of our infinite ACTING HUMAN game. 

So, we shall dive deep into our practice to learn  how we can navigate the media morass so as to see clearly and not get stuck in the muck.

There was a time when television was referred to as a ‘vast wasteland.’ We cannot so easily dismiss media with disdain. It is an active element in our lives. To push it away is to deny ourselves the opportunity to live alive in today’s fast changing world.

Seeing the effects of news as sports is one step in the direction of enlarged awareness, to serve ourselves and each other, to play truly in the Universal Theater for sanity and humanity.

There are several books that I commend to your attention. I will refer to them often. Here they are:

Until next time,

Lights Up!