Recent Thoughts About Improv

One night I couldn't sleep and wrote all this up. I didn't post it right away, wanting to take some time rereading and making sure that I really mean everything I say. Nearly two weeks later, here it is:

I have been doing improv for almost two years, and during that time I have learned and formulated many thoughts regarding the art form. Some of them I still believe to this day, and some of them I have rendered false. These are what have been in my head recently. I may change my mind about them later, but, as is in improv, it is all about here and now.

1. The best improv classes I have had are ones that is beneficial to me NOW. That is, if I quit doing improv tomorrow, I wouldn't look back and feel like I have wasted a lot of time and money on it for nothing. What improv is doing to me today is more important than what it might do for me in the future.

2. I don't think we should aspire to be like anybody else. We shouldn't look for role models in somebody who is more talented and successful than us. Aspiring only keeps us from seeing and improving ourselves, and from being where we are.

3. Thinking about fame and fortune only keeps you from doing good works. It also keeps you from being a decent person. This applies to all kinds of artists.

4. It's annoying to listen to someone talking about how passionate they are about improv, how improv can save the world, and how everybody should do it. It doesn't cure cancer. It's just an art form. GET OVER IT.

5. Talking about improv just takes away the energy from doing good improv.

6. Just like everything else in the world, improv isn't for everybody. There's nothing wrong with you if you don't like it. Try pottery.

7. If you constantly quote improv books in conversations, you probably have yet to internalize the knowledge and practice what you preach.

8. I'd rather do an unfunny scene than get laughs from making a mockery of the theater by playing caricatures.

9. Instead of telling students not to try to be funny, improv teachers should teach them how to do a good, wholesome yet non-comedic scene.

10. During class, instead of trying to be a better improviser, I constantly try to be a better person.

How am I?

Sometimes I get annoyed when people ask me how I am. I don't like to lie, and at the same time I don't always feel well. I don't want to say that I'm well when I'm not, and I don't want to elaborate on why I don't feel well. A lot of times I can tell that people expect me to say that I'm well, and when I say that I'm not--that I'm angry, unhappy, etc--they look at me weird as if nobody in the world is supposed to feel anything but fine, so-so, or okay.

It has become a habit of mine to tell people the truth when they ask me how I am. I started doing it when I was in high school, because I recognized that the question was merely customary and I wanted to disturb the universe by treating it as genuine. It backfired on me because people started thinking I'm a weirdo for being so unhappy so often. I'm sorry my life is sucking a lot right now. Trust me it hurts me more than it hurts you. I get angry a lot these days. I'm trying to do something about it. In the meantime, please respect the state I'm in. If you don't want a negative response, or if you don't really care, don't ask me how I am.

Reading for Fun?

(from my other blog: books for lunch)

I used to love reading, then I started hating it but continued to do it anyway, and now I’m beginning to love it again--and here is why:

My love for reading began when I was in middle school. I could barely speak English at the time and didn’t have any friends. Back then there wasn’t enough on the Internet to distract me, so that I read to keep myself entertained and to learn English. I was lonely and had a lot of free time on my hand, so that it didn’t take long for my reading to improve. Pretty soon I graduated from picture books for little kids to young adult novels. Those were fun. I was almost always excited to discover new stories and get to know new characters. Oftentimes I was compelled to keep reading even when my eyes were exhausted. Anybody who loves to read probably understands what that’s like.

All that joy gradually decreased as my interest in literature became serious, probably somewhere around senior year in high school. I was obsessed with wanting to be well-read, wanting to read everything that I heard mentioned in films or television, as well as in conversations with others. Before I knew it I had majored in English in college, studying literature like my life depended on it.

I loved being an English major, and I love studying literature. However, it had taken the joy out of reading. I started choosing the books to read based on their literary significance, not because they interest me. In the past I would look at the cover, read the flap to find out what the book was about, and if it sounded good I would read it. Nowadays I don’t even know what most of the books I choose to read are about. I don’t take the time to read the flap because it doesn’t matter--the book is significant and that means I have to read it regardless of whether or not it sounds interesting. Most of the time this results in a boring and excruciating reading experience. I don’t get excited to read anymore as it had become a chore, and very rarely do I find a book that I truly enjoy.

Well, all that is about to change. Last week I went to Powell’s to kill some time. Browsing the shelves in the blue room, I remembered why I used to love reading so much. There were so many interesting books I had never heard of. I decided that it was time to stop being such a scholar and just be a reader, just pick up anything that might interest me and read with joy again. I still have a long list of books I’m trying to read by the end of the year, but I intend to make some time for the ones that didn’t make it to the list just to retrieve my love for reading once again.

And now I have to go. I have some reading to do.

Life's Little Interruptions

I once heard Martha Stewart describe her jail time as one of the "interruptions." She said that she thought her life was good and had always been good, except for these little interruptions. I randomly recalled this earlier today, and it made me feel instantly better about the state that I'm in. I used to think of life as a roller coaster ride, the way it goes up and down, and how it has to go down in order to go up again. But unhappiness can be so unbearable sometimes, and putting it that way didn't help much. Waiting for things to be good again is excruciating. But when I think of the tough times as insignificant interruptions, it somehow makes life simpler and more peaceful.

I visualize it like a long, smooth line, with a few dots here and there. If I really think about it, in my life so far the dots have been few and minuscule. And the further away I have moved from them, the smaller they become. In the end there will always be more of the line than the dots.

Meditation on my way home

I just biked home from Sellwood, something I have been doing a lot lately. My friend Laurel lives there, and I’ve been going to her house weekly to hang out and watch a movie with her. It’s something I have just started doing, and up until recently the whole area of Sellwood was unfamiliar to me. I’m getting to know it a little more each time. It was dark and cold on my way back, but the streets were empty and smooth. The trees were tall and mystical. Every time I took that route I promised myself I would come back during the day one of these days and explore the area. I want to get to know it better, because it is a part of the city that is still fresh and interesting to me, a part of the city that I have been living in for almost eleven years and still find little adventures here and there. I know I’ll have to leave Portland eventually, but right now I don’t feel the need to just yet. I’ll get tired of Sellwood eventually, and then my life will probably somehow lead me to a different neighborhood with which I’m still unfamiliar. And then I’ll get tired of all of them and want to leave, but somehow I believe I’ll probably end up leaving before that happens. I don’t think I’ll ever be completely glad to leave Portland.

Opera

In high school I was exposed to classical singing. I sang in choirs and studied voice. I was fascinated by that kind of vocal production; not only because it sounded great but also because there is something I find very organic about it, as if it is the voice that our soul makes rather than out body. It moves me more than any kind of singing.

That was when I started watching operas. It didn't become my favorite art form; while the music is great, the stories in operas (ones I was watching at the time) weren't so great. The acting was never was the top priority--not that there is much you can do with such paper-thin characters. I still enjoyed the singing and the lavished productions, but it still took me some effort to motivate myself to watch an opera.

I'm different now. Part of it is age, and part of it is having continued to listen to music, classical and not, with great vocals, as well as having studied different aspects of theater arts. My appreciation of the human voice and theater ability had greatly increased, and it helped me to enjou watching operas a whole lot more. Cornell Macneil, who played the title role, made an immense impression on me. His instrument was so extraordinary. It was desert to my ears, one of which I couldn't get enough. It inspired me so much that I actually started getting excited to watch more just to feel that kind of inspiration again.

So, I'm going to start watching more operas and probably blogging about it.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Reading List 2011

Middlemarch - George Eliot
The Illiad - Homer
Tess of the d’Uberville - Thomas Hardy
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler - Calvino
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Pastoral - Philip Roth
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
Anna Karennina - Leo Tolstoy
The Spanish Tragedy - Thomas Kyd
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Ghosts - Henrik Ibsen
Catch-22 - Joseph Keller
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Memories, Dreams, Reflections - C.G. Jung
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
The Prince - Machiavelli

Realistically I don't think I will be able to read all of these books this year. Even though I read a lot, I am kind of a slow reader. And I read a lot of things that aren't books, such as essays and short stories. Averagely I probably read fewer than 20 books a year.

As a student of literature there are always books I feel I should have read. This list is a compilation of 20 titles that I have always been meaning to read and felt I should have read long ago. There are a whole lot more that I leave out. I didn't include a lot of plays, just because there are way too many to list. In other words, I'll be doing as much as I can to read these books while spending a whole lot of time reading ones that aren't on the list too. Thinking about this makes me feel overwhelmed and excited at the same time.

It's already March. How the fuck did we get here?