” gone” made in 2013 by cole
Today Faye Driscoll taught a master class at OSU. I was late and entered a room of maybe 37 students and a few observing faculty. Faye Driscoll’s work Thank You for Coming: Attendance is on tour at the Wex and she is well-liked in these parts. In allkindsof parts I bet. I’ve been drawn to her work since I saw You’re Me in 2013. This year I attended the dress rehearsal and opening show.
Now I sit sunny, set on a porch not mine. I type this re-collecting the day’s experience, through a filter of the day’s experience. I feel heavy, hurting. I feel like I’m in danger but it’s a familiar feeling. One I create perhaps. Alone and shifting slow, I see people moving out past me, in multiples. I am not well.
Of course I am.
I want to move, but I need to work so I begin but must write about moving before I can start a prospectus that is due at midnight. i watch people walk by. I have headphones on, with nothing on, so it is the birds I hear and my fingers typing and p[ople laughing bright smiling.
Nothing of my experience has been a waste.
What we see is time, imagined.
I cry stop, I stop to cry, and I stop crying all the time. I love in ways that sometimes do not love back. But I am love. And I am not-love. I think how much it feels as life consumes me – the ‘it’ of it.
Does life feel as it rolls through my timebody?
I no longer wonder what love is. Or what it is here to do. I love what I love. And that is enough. Love is its own purpose. Sometimes it hurts me or hurts to be loved by me. I love what I love. And not because it loves me.
So it goes, #sometimes: off with me.
I stand up and circle back round to myself. I love what I love. I want no more. My work is calling. Someone else make the rules, play the game, I’m off. with me. It’s chilling sometimes how dismissive I can be with those I love. Especially when I don’t see that i am. I think of nothing but myself as I relate. I am not peaceful or kind just as often as I am.
So it goes, this way or that.
Faye Driscoll leads the Friday morning class through a sweaty event of transformation and then this 7minutes. She says ‘7’ as she meets my eyes (this happenstance finds me everywhere as it is a family number, some tattooed). She leads us flowing through: joy, rage, grief, arousal, fear, peace. She asks us to physiologically ‘jump’ into a full expression of these six ideas / felt states over the course of 7 minutes, focusing awareness on the in-between places where it “slipperily” transitions to one state from the next. A little diddy of the order is sung too many times by the students and then we begin.
Joy RAge Grief ArousAL fear peace
it happens and she sounds “end score”. As we circle to talk after she talks about the revisit of these feelings as we go through our day, that they may come up again in us. the room empties and folks fly off with their time. I return to my computer work and am ecstatic to find a message waiting for me, until I find it is a link to a song – “you just wasted all my precious time. but don’t think twice, it’s alright” in tandem with a block on fb. . .
grief rage fear peace fear arousal joy rage grief fear peace rage grief joy peace grief peace grief fear peace fear peace grief peace …
arousal peace joy rage peace fear peace joy peace joy peace joy peace arousal joy
etc. and never one at a time
The experiences of the day filter me into the written. sun set and night dark with far-off sounds, that voice is calling me but it isn’t real.
of course it is.
People are throwing something around. Spreading out power of self. With/out knowing self as other. We are reflecting back to ourselves. I am what I see.
As I teach I hear myself.
A few months ago, I began to think and say while leading improv working group, classes, my car down the road…:
I am my own first partner.
The earth is my second.
An other, my third.
I teach this to people. ‘3 partners’.
It is a good idea and I’m starting to be able to remember it.
All human – weakshaking and smilingtears, I love what I love with a shine on my skin.
Cole G 