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Comedy

Comedy entered my performances in 2007 with the debut of Goddess of Roses. Not that I’d never been funny, in the text itself or in the spontaneous breaks from it. But an unpremeditated freedom took hold of me–can freedom ever be premeditated?–that night, and during those breaks many things that I said and did caused the audience to laugh. My unconscious integration of comedy surprised me, and now it just happens during a performance. More play. More engagement with the audience, in which I can tease them or ask them to help me with something or further personalize or conceptualize an idea or a story in the text.

I think that comedy balances any elements of the seductive and ethereal actress (which I write about in the October 23 post, Actress) and helps to bring her down to earth.

  • October 28, 2009
  • Filed under: My work
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Revelations of the body/mind

Revelations at the silent meditation retreat that I recently attended? (See October 18, Gently radical changing 1, which also includes information about Vipassana and the Buddha, both of which I mention later in this post.)

Some of the revelations were new, some renewed. ALWAYS trust my body. Let life take its course as I simultaneously act in the world from the seed of that trust. Never force, a feeling, an energy, a sensation, idea, or fantasy. Volition creates reality.

Revelations also came as bodily sensations whose causes or disappearances I cannot explain. We presume to know what causes effects in our lives: I did such and such which then produced such and such outcome–a one-to-one correspondence. That’s simplistic, as you might understand by reading publications in quantum physics or the ecstatic writings of mystics or by deeply exploring your own life, past and present, because trajectories and vectors of acts, speech, events, and volitions are complex, rich, and mysterious.

Recognizing such circumstances, the best we can do sometimes with reality is to announce to ourselves, “Now that was interesting!” Revelation as an amazed but not very verbally articulate response. Case in point. The second or third night when I lay down to sleep,  my sacrum and left hip hurt like hell, soreness that resembled the worst aches of flu. Within the next 2 days, that anguish disappeared. According to Vipassana theory, those bodily pains were simultaneously mental/emotional pains. When the mind reacts, the body does too, and that reaction, which creates physical sensation, may embed itself in the body. Without reaction, gunk–not the Buddha’s term!–surfaces and leaves.

Another inexplicable dissolution of gunk happened over the first two days of the retreat. Wave after wave of tension, like a tide of sighs, washed down and off my upper and mid back, leaving both the back and shoulders with an unfamiliar and delicious ease that I didn’t know I’d been missing.

The effects of those revelations? Freshness and lightness.

Charles Alexander’s “Pushing Water 52″

Charles Alexander’s poem “Pushing Water 52″ is gorgeous. Over and over as I read it, I pause, my mind empties of distractions. The lines take me way within myself and so far into the world that nothing at all is worrisome and gathering beauty is as easy as giving it away.

When I heard him read the poem, 1 phrase in particular held me for days and still does. I say held, because I couldn’t let it go, yet I’m  letting it free me, like a loved one’s spacious embrace, from fear of stasis and endings: “a stop is an invitation.” Stop as a gentle measure. Stop as an opening to pleasure, for we generally extend invitations to happenings that pleasurably engage or sometimes enlighten us, such as celebrations, cultural events, and quiet dinners. Hearing Charles speak the phrase, I thought of how a period at the end of a sentence invites another sentence, of how the quiet after someone has spoken invites another person to speak or invites both parties into loving silence or invites an action, and mostly of this: when we stop an action or a series of actions, we invite others to act, to feel, to relax. Stop, as an invitation, is itself a generous act.

“Pushing Water 52″ is part of Pushing Water, which is a long sequence to be published in Charles’s next book–he says that may be a year and a half away. The poem will also appear in an anthology of contemporary American poetry which is a special issue of the Duke University Press journal boundary 2.

Besides being a poet, Charles is the director and founder of Chax Press, which, as its website, chax.org, states, publishes poetry that is “experimental” and “humanist.” See the website and also chax.org/blog.

Actress

In 2004, after a performance of Ambrosia (see my book Clairvoyance for the text and Canadian venue), a compliment from an audience member struck me so profoundly that it initiated an expanded self-terminology. I’ve called myself a performance artist for many years, and because of her comment, I’ve added actress, knowing that actor is the currently preferred term by and for women who act. (Although the November issue of American Vogue calls several prominent women who act actresses.)

1Joanna and her props

The audience member said, “You’re different–talking with you–than you are onstage.” I laughed and agreed, and asked her to articulate the difference. “Onstage you’re so seductive and ethereal.” I surprised myself by responding, “If I were that way all the time, nobody would talk to me! As it is, almost no one talks to me after a performance!” Then she said, “It’s the actress.”

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Intimacy and art

An artwork can be an intimate object. It’s a matter of the relationship between the observer and the object. Response, even responsiveness, may be more precise and profound than relationship. For me, pleasure is the ground of responsiveness. In light of that, I’m astoundingly responsive to Caravaggio and Rossetti. Sometimes my own responsiveness, my own intimacy with them/their art surprises me. I want to be closer closer closer . . . They bring me into intimacy with myself, soul-and-mind-inseparable-from-body. The feeling of being in love, not in a horridly romantic obsessive way, but in a light and fascinated way that propels you to want to know, see, and create the best and most beautiful you can be, is the intimacy I feel with Rossetti’s and Caravaggio’s art.

It would seem that materials used by an artist could create greater or lesser intimacy. In an abstract way, embroidery can be seen as more intimate than oil painting, and perhaps experienced as such, because of its (feminine) history and the process itself of embroidering. However, is oil paint, despite its high art history, in and of itself any less intimate or erotic than thread? Is painting in oils any less about touch than is embroidering?

When I think about the effects that many Rossetti and Caravaggio paintings have on me, I know that a complex of intimacies is playing with me. The intimacies are emotional, sensual, psychic, and to a lesser extent intellectual. Their gentle and dynamic reach into my very self inspires and excites me.

Women staring at women

If you’re a woman you’re probably aware of another woman having stared at you. In fact, at a very particular part of you, like your clothed belly or naked thigh or upper lip. What is she looking for, anyway?

I think that she’s looking for similarity or difference in order to determine, perhaps unknowingly, an equivalence or a discrepancy that makes you or her the “better” woman. In other words, the staring reflects a competitive “achievement” of femininity or beauty. Whose abs are firmer? Whose thigh is more slender? On whose upper lip is the hair invisible?

Last week I walked into a jewelry store, in Tucson, known for its unique and elegant designs, intending to purchase a silver chain, which I did. My feet drew a stare from the woman who helped me–I was wearing red sandals with black socks–and later she stared at one of my cheeks–a swift scrutiny of faded, teenage acne scars? She was kind, helpful, and respectful, as a customer would expect in such a shop, yet I felt strange, even when we mentioned our short fingernails and she looked at hers and then mine. She was gathering evidence–for or against me, I’m not sure.

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Gently radical changing 2

My experience of the silent meditation retreat that I attended (see October 18, 2009, Gently radical changing 1) encompasses much more than my blog response, and uniqueness describes each individual’s involvement, so please take my words as inadequately explanatory and not at all definitive.

However, I do want to state 2 facts clearly and to suggest a reading if you’d like to know more. First, the Vipassana practice that I learned is not connected with any religion. The method and concepts adhere to the Buddha’s teachings, but the practice is not Buddhist. Second, retreat participants pay nothing, for food, accomodations, instruction. Nothing. That in itself attracted me, the purity of giving, as did the separateness from any religion. The reading is Paul Fleischman’s essay, “Vipassana Meditation: A Unique Contribution to Mental Health,” in his book Karma and Chaos, published by Vipassana Research Publications. I know you can find it at pariyatti.org. If the term “mental health” sends you reeling into mild nausea, as it does me–something creepily clinical and institutionalizing about it–don’t worry. The essay is friendly, human, and engaging.

Gently radical changing 1

“It’s life-changing!” is a phrase that often points to a dramatic shift. We tend to think of life-changing occurrences as radical, and in the conversational context of the phrase life-changing, we may associate the word radical with extreme and even violent change, such as an illness that disturbs one’s body or the death of a loved one. Life-changing situations or events as crisis-motivated. Radical change as unexpected and unchosen.

Radical derives from the Latin radix, root. So, radical change is foundational, it happens in the ground of a person’s being. Radical indicates profundity, and a power within that, but neither vehement force nor boggling intensity. A radical change in life can be gentle, and I’ve been experiencing a gently radical change, one that I chose.

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Assuming

People assume things really often. Usually through an unconscious or unacknowledged belief that everyone is like them, especially someone they think they know well, whether friend, partner, or family member. When we speak and act from such assumptions, we misperceive and misunderstand.

Not too long ago–but long enough that it does feel like history!–I was dating a man who assumed stuff a lot, and more than occasionally about me. At that time I was becoming aware of the frequency with which spoken assumptions surrounded me. Nothing special about my life, assumptions simply being a reality in the world once you wake up to them. Wishing to point out the problem with making assumptions about me, and about things in general, I said, “When you assume things, you’re usually . . .” He interrupted me with the word “right.” Which, of course, glaringly indicated exactly the problem!!

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Intimacy and femininity

I don’t think that femininity and intimacy are necessarily linked.

Intimacy with a person brings out my femininity. Receptivity is a conventionally feminine quality, and intimacy opens me so that I’m receptive. Bold innocence and receptivity go hand in hand.

 
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