Dont hold your breath
I have started classes. I am excited. Terrified. On fire. At peace. Restless. Exhausted. And Im back. After a years break from acting I am diving in once again to the overwhelming world of my inner life. The swamp. The place where, amidst the mud and water and reeds, my truth lies. The truth of my past experience, my present, my wants, my needs. My murky, dark, beautifully confused and living pool of… well, life.
I am finding that the time I took from acting was not a wasted space.
I used to loathe Shakespeare. A mortal sin for an actor, but nevertheless, I just didnt get it. The language did not resonate in my very soul as others described it doing. It seemed too far from reach for me. To complicated. To grand. Last week as I was searching for a sonnett for voice class, I read his words and it took the wind away from me. It left me weak. Choking back tears. Somewhere, all that I’d learned in college and rehearsals that I wasnt able to grasp at the time, was there to support me. Somehow, in the space away from the arduous task of memorizing and thinking it to death- the beauty of his words, his thoughts, his truth leaped across the four hundred years and touched me. I want to read more. I want to feel more.
Beneath the multitude of foreign words and phrases, there is something simple and pure. While it may appear grand and complicated, at its heart, there is only just the truth. A simple human need. The need to be loved. To be forgiven. To prove. To feel worthy. To connect.
I cant even begin to know what life is all about, but I get the feeling that at everyones very core there is just a need to feel connected to something, to someone. To be something more than just a lonely body filled with thoughts. We want a witness. Someone to see us. Hear us. Hold us. Share with us this life.
Today in class we had a brief discussion about generation Y. There is an epidemic that goes unnoticed with people of my generation. We have lost our voices. We mumble. Speak too quickly. We are distracted. Unclear. We cut corners, send abbrieviated text messages, go online, and check out. We have reality TV shows, but we cant get real. We share downloads, but we cant share ourselves. Maybe we are afraid. Maybe we just dont know how.
Today as we each spoke our sonnetts aloud, our instructor would place her hands at the place where we needed to breathe from. Most of us were nervous. Our breath stuck in our throats, our chests. Shallow and forced. Our voices stuck. But as her hand placed its energy to our core, the energy of our breathe would drop to meet it. Without even being aware of it, we needed to bridge the gap, and find the connection.
