ART DIRECT YOURSELF

NOTES:
As in planning and shooting a movie…locations…SETS…where you live and work…what bars and restaurants you hang out in. Your car. "Props"…cell phone, eyepod, briefcase…a cane? How you decorate and light your house/apartment...



All of these are extensions/expressions of character/persona/self, and should be taken into consideration…changed around as you re-write and re-act yourself.

In Cinemorphic seminars, groups or sessions skilled professionals in these areas collaborate with you in accomplishing these changes.

COLLABORATION

Motion picture production is a collaborative effort.

There is great power in collaboration, between and among producer/writer/director/actor/cameraman/editor, etc.

This is not movie making by committee.

At its best, it can foster a potent alchemy of creativity and imagination…and the synergistic power of a "third mind" emerges. The movie just finds the groove…like jazz improvisation…and plays itself.

The same is true of the practice/play of Cinemorphics.

WILD TALENTS

At this point we should probably ask an important question. How is it that human beings are even capable of using procedures like Cinemorphics? What "wild talents" do we possess that afford us this option? Too often these attributes may be taken for granted…until someone gives us a Zen-like whack on the head and wakes us up.

Indeed, cosmographer and speculative scientist Charles Fort (1874-1932) published a book entitled WILD TALENTS in which he does discuss the extravagant natural abilities of human beings, but, as enlightening and amusing as Fort can sometimes be as he whacks us, it is probably wise not to travel down that road in this discussion.



Instead, I suggest we take a long look at THE CREATED SELF, REINVENTING BODY, PERSONA AND SPIRIT by psychologist Robert J. Weber, who reminds us that we are now at a stage in our evolution where our self-awareness, imagination, intelligence and "wild talent" are developed to such an extent that we can go about consciously re-constructing ourselves.



Kenneth Gergen says of THE CREATED SELF:
"In today's culture, the self is considered largely a work in progress. Our bodies can now be altered and extended in ways previously undreamed of; our personas are constantly assuming multiple roles in the course of our daily lives; and we seek spiritual fulfillment in myriad traditional and nontraditional cultures, both sacred and secular. Yet as we constantly reinvent ourselves, how do we balance freedom and flexibility with integrity and unity? Using the insights of William James and evolutionary psychology as a springboard, the innovative psychologist Robert J. Weber explores the new, shifting self."

THE CREATED SELF (and other theoretical readings mentioned in this blog) opens the discussion about contemporary humans becoming equipped to self-consciously manipulate their bodies, personas and spirituality.

How this is accomplished operationally, as we have begun to sketch and will continue to explore, is another matter.

ROBERTA BREITMORE

Check out the Sunday, November 27 issue of the NEW YORK TIMES for an article about artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, part of which deals with her notorious Roberta Breitmore project. I have included a brief excerpt from the article below:



"…she conjured up Roberta Breitmore, her most sustained character study. From 1974 to 1978, while Ms. Hershman Leeson was a wife and mother trying to make it in San Francisco as an artist, Roberta was a divorced woman new to town, trying to make it on her own. The artist brought her to life by wearing a blond wig, applying heavy makeup and adopting a set of rather depressive tendencies.

Other performance artists in the 1970's were also creating characters to untangle the knots of identity and gender, but Roberta was no one-act wonder. She had her own slumped posture, slow gait, colorful outfit, loopy handwriting, odd jobs and romantic encounters. In time, Roberta acquired a driver's license, two credit cards and her own apartment.

"Everyone thought I was crazy," the artist said. "But I rented Roberta an apartment across the street from my house. I just didn't feel her life would be complete without her own space."

Interesting take on bringing a fictitious character…or a new persona…to "life".

ACT NOW!

Here's another very useful and practical BOOK, about which Talia Shire says,
"Destined to become the classic handbook for using acting techniques in everyday life."

DREAMING IN CHARACTER, cont.

If you Google "dreaming in character" all sorts of interesting stuff turns up…lots of situations where actors start "dreaming in character" while doing a part, or gamesters start dreaming from the POV of their game character. Here's one example from an ARTICLE about the actor Peter Krause:



That Krause's work bleeds into his personal life is no surprise given how deeply he immerses himself in his roles. In the past he's been so preoccupied with Nate's plight in Six Feet Under that he's found himself dreaming in character. The strain of portraying these troubled souls has even manifested itself physically. "My lowest point was probably right before We Don't Live Here Anymore," Krause says. "I had this really bad case of hives all over my body from the stress."

DREAMING IN CHARACTER

As part of the process of creating a new character for yourself try to dream as if you are that character. Meditate on this for a few minutes before going to sleep and see what happens. This is like learning a foreign language and dreaming in that language.



Here are some of the responses to the question "Have you ever dreamed you were someone else?" asked in a discussion group on BELIEFNET.COM:

"Many years ago, I had a dream that I was someone else...it has always intrigued me and I've wondered if it is a possible vision of a past life. Has anyone else dreamt of being someone other than yourself?"

"All the time. I am rarely myself in a dream. Usually it's completely made up dream-characters I identify with, sometimes I also change identification during the dream. It also happens that I dream I am a character from a movie or book, even non-human ones."



"Interesting...I have also dreamed that I was a character in a cartoon, but I was still me. The other dream was very bizarre because I knew it wasn't me physically, but I knew all the thoughts and emotions of this old woman. And I saw things through her eyes...like tunnel vision almost. Glad to know, though, that others have had similar dreams."

…etc. Check out the site for more and remember, as Willie Nelson said, "Be careful what you're dreaming…soon your dream'll be dreaming you."

UNIFORMS EXPOSED

A significant piece of the puzzle when "trying on" a new character can be the way this new character dresses. What kind of "costume" should they wear to enhance and reinforce the presentation. Most people adopt some kind of habitual uniform whether they identify it as such or not.

UNIFORMS EXPOSED by Jennifer Craik explores the phenomenon of the uniform very effectively.



Book Description
There is nothing uniform about wearing a uniform. This one article of clothing has arguably had a greater impact on the world than any other. From fascists to fashionistas, Uniforms Exposed looks at this most extraordinary of ordinary garments and its cultural meaning in our everyday lives. Tracing the troubling connections amongst religious orders, the military, schools and fetish clubs, Craik shows how uniforms alternately control bodies and enable subversion. What does it mean to wear one? Why do certain professions require them? Do they really tell wearers how to act and others how to respond? Answering these intriguing questions and many more, Craik shows how the uniform inspires fear and love, conformity and subversion, and why it has continued to fascinate across cultures and throughout history.

TWO EXPERIMENTS

1. Drop personal history and self-importance. Costume yourself in some beat-up old clothes and become a homeless person/panhandler for a day. Take notes on how this makes you feel. Don't just think about it…write it down.

2. Un-occupied and un-employed. Stand in a relatively busy place and do nothing. Be un-occupied and un-employed for ten minutes. Don't pretend to be waiting for someone, relaxing, "people watching", or the like, if someone asks what you are doing. That would be "doing waiting", "doing relaxing" or "doing people watching". You have no job and you are doing nothing. Take notes on how this makes you feel.



These two exercises yield very different results, but both begin to expose who "you" are. The first, although not exclusively so, is discussed extensively by CARLOS CASTANEDA in his books about his apprenticeship to the (interestingly enough, fictitious) Yaqui shaman Don Juan.



The second is included in Bernard McGrane's THE UN-TV AND THE 10 MPH CAR which I highly recommend.

ZEN PHYSICS

When you create a new character for yourself and you begin to work with it, you will find that your old, habitual character/construct has a life of its own…does not want to be "killed off". Do not kill it. Set it aside. Use it.

But there can be sadness. You have "lost" a loved one…your old persona. There can be periods of grief the more the old you fades away. An intriguing meditation: Think of Cinemorphic change as death and reincarnation.

To take this one step further, check out ZEN PHYSICS by David Darling. Here's a description of the book from Publishers Weekly:



"With the catapult of logic, astrophysicist Darling (Equations of Eternity) lobs a barrage of scientific data against death's door. But he-and we-never quite gain access to the ultimate mystery. The title notwithstanding, Darling's prime ammo is psychology, not physics, and Zen enters his plan only in the endgame. His main thrust involves presenting cases of amnesia, multiple personality disorder and other afflictions, as well as facts of the brain-mind connection, to demonstrate that our sense of self is not steady, as is generally supposed, but fluid, even temporally discrete. Darling then announces a not quite convincing and emotionally unsatisfying theory of "reincarnation" based on this ever-changing self, in which successive incarnations of "me" retain no personal link from one to the next. With great elegance, he next uses findings of quantum physics to show that consciousness is primary to matter. This contradicts Western scientific orthodoxy, but Darling makes a strong case. Both the fluid self and the primacy of matter accord with Buddhist principles, which is where Zen comes in. Oddly, though, Darling's idea of reincarnation seems to veer from Zen basics, as it eliminates the possibility of conscious reincarnation. Likely, readers will finish this bold brief sensing they've peeked through death's keyhole, but have not opened the door."

The Mechanic & The Artist

How extensive a change are you going for? Do you really need to drop one persona and adopt another? To what extent are you defined by a role?



e.g. if you work on cars and are known as “the mechanic” to what extent does this identity define you? Could the same “you’ also paint pictures and, at times, identify with the idea of being “the artist”. Are “the artist” and “the mechanic” mutually exclusive?



Are you so sick of being identified as “the mechanic” that this identity must be dropped? Is money involved? Will those around you allow you to not be “the mechanic”? Does this freak them out? What bearing does this have on you? Have you gotten to the point that you don’t care. To feel honest with yourself…feel “authentic”…is it important for your audience, i.e. your relationships, to embrace the new you?

BOOZE & BODYMIND

A brief note on a huge and obvious topic…

I was in a bar the other night meeting some friends. It was later on in the evening and everybody was drinking pretty good. I was not…anymore. (see "Birth of Cinemorphics" post.) Something I am very well aware of, and is certainly not new news, really grabbed me for some reason on this occasion. I know many of these people in non-bar situations. In this setting (on this stage), at this time (11PM on a Friday night) they were all "different people"…strikingly so.



When you drink or do drugs you can "become a different person" very easily. This can either be a very effective tool or a highly suspect short-cut. Prescription "designer" personality/performance drugs can have the same effect (e.g. anti-depressants, tranquillizers, steroids, Viagra, pot). Changing biochemistry changes behavior…changing behavior changes biochemistry (and physiology). See e.g. THE EDGE EFFECT in an earlier post. Do you laugh because something is funny or does your laughing make something "funny"?

It is important to be aware these interactions, but it is usually not a good idea to use substances as the primary means for re-inventing yourself. Conversely, it is critical to realize how you are able to change your biochemistry and physiology via behavior. These effects can also be beneficial or harmful…and they are always present. Everything you ingest is a "drug" and every behavior effects your inner "physical" ecology. You are a BODYMIND…not a Body with a Mind or vice versa…not two…

Also…the issue of control. One goal or side effect of Cinemorphics is the apparent heightened ability to consciously form and control who you are and what you do in the world. Learning to control substance intake to create a desired effect…and being able to maintain this edge…walk this tightrope…is a demanding art.

TULPA TANGO

Another email suggested that we have a look at Tulpa creation and the adventures of Alexandra David-Neel in the context of Cinemorphics. I guess the idea is that if you can create a free-acting "being" or "character" using only imaginal means, that you should also be able to create a new persona for yourself which could ride around on your bodily matrix. I realize that we are heading in the direction of Over The Top here, but this is provocative stuff. I quote from www.tulpa.com:

"The word Tulpa is from the Tibetan language and refers to any entity that attains reality solely by the act of imagination. The entity is created entirely within the confines of ones own mind, not drawn out, written down or even verbally described.


Alexandra David-Neel

If its creator wishes, this 'Tulpa Creation' may become physical reality through intense concentration and visualization. However, care must be taken to only bring to reality what is beneficial to the world, lest it's destruction becomes more problematic than its creation". READ MORE



Some groups have also performed EXPERIMENTS in Tulpa creation which are fun to read about.

BEING BATMAN

The theme of this post...the superhero and their "ordinary reality" alter ego was suggested by an email from a reader who will remain anonymous for the moment. (If you would like for me to mention your name in association with this let me know.)



This idea is explored in a fascinating article in Forbes entitled BEING BATMAN which examines the logistics and cost of literally producing yourself as Batman. The cost factor, which is sometimes not fully considered when imagining a new "you", is at the forefront here rather than acting or re-writing methods...an entertaining angle for an article in a business magazine.



Another consideration here, of course, is the "chicken/egg" question. Clark Kent did not invent Superman. Superman maintained Clark Kent as a cover. Bruce Wayne invented Batman. Acting out multiple personas or expressing different aspects of the self happens to all of us in our day to day life in less calculating and extreme forms. e.g. There is very often a "different you" at home and at work. An interesting approach would be to intentionally use this as a form of play. Design, produce and act a specific character that has been invented for use only in designated situations. Give this character a name...say, Bob or Juanita...and be Bob or Juanita on Saturdays only.

GREAT IMPOSTERS

Two more movies, THE GREAT IMPOSTER and CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, based on the exploits of real people, Fred Demara and Frank Abagnale Jr. respectively, come to mind in this discussion.



Although the fictions these "characters" created is further fictionalized by Hollywood, the movies are worth checking out and the source material (two novels...again fictionalized versions) is worth exploring. These guys were the real pretenders.

Jacques Lacan and THE PASSENGER

Anyone interested in a more in depth analysis of THE PASSENGER than was offered by my off hand comments in the previous post should read "Antonioni's THE PASSENGER as Lacanian Text" by Jack Turner. I present the first paragraph below with a link to the entire essay:



In Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 film The Passenger, the main character, David Locke,[1] portrayed by Jack Nicholson, impulsively "trades in" his own life for that of another man who resembles him and who dies in an adjacent hotel room in Africa. Locke is attempting to escape the painful prison of his own life and enter the realms of possibility and enticing mystery represented by the life of another; in other words, he is trying to create reality from a common fantasy. He is trying to rewrite the narrative of his life, and he is hoping to "become" someone else, just as many moviegoers do vicariously while in the theater. Unfortunately he lies to himself and ignores the fact that any such trade, outside the seemingly magical environment of the cinema, is going to include the sometimes startling sensations associated not only with risk and change but with a different perspective, based on the history of the life one is stepping into; his escapism is also analogous to suicide, a rejection of one's own history and possibilities. Locke's story shows that lying to oneself by trying to live in what Jacques Lacan referred to as the Imaginary (a fantasy world) is even more perilous and self- destructive than lying to others.
READ MORE

Jack Nicholson & The Passenger

Just saw Michelangelo Antonioni's THE PASSENGER again after thirty years. Talk about abandoning one "character" and picking up another! The movie illustrates that dropping personal history is sometimes not so easy…even when it seems that the "you" you are dropping is dead. You somehow follow yourself around and come back to bite yourself in the butt. Be careful who you switch identities with…if the "new you" turns out to be a gun runner, you might wind up dead twice.



I highly recommend checking out the re-release of the movie, which Nicholson owns, and, finally, the release of the DVD.

Joaquin Phoenix and Johnny Cash

JOAQUIN PHOENIX on getting into a character, on drinking and Johnny Cash:

The problem, he says, was work. Or, rather, not working.

"When I work, work becomes my sole focus, and when I would finish a film I didn't know what to do with myself," he says. "It's always a difficult period leading up to a film, because when I get into a character I step away from everything that is part of what makes me me. When I go away on location, all I have that really reminds me of myself is a pair of boxers -- I get rid of clothes, everything, show up with basically nothing in a strange city where I don't know anybody. Then you start getting the props that you use in the film, you start getting the wardrobe, and you start developing these traits and things that make you comfortable as the character.



"And then the film is over and you have to give back the props and give back the clothes and I can't spend four hours of my day working on a song. So you have this period of 'What'll I do?' So it's a difficult period when it's over. There's always a period in which I don't do anything, just the bare necessities, breathe and eat."

After filming ended on "Walk the Line," Phoenix noticed he was "drinking more than I was happy with. So I just decided that I would stop. I don't know, maybe I'll start drinking again in a couple of months, but one thing that John showed is that sobriety is not synonymous with being boring. His best work was done before he was addicted and after, when he got clean."

"Venus" - Operations - 12

Write a detailed character description of yourself. An inventory. Maybe as a list down one side of the page. Make another list on the other side of the page with changes opposite each item. (Obviously, some items will not be changed.) Based on this new list, write another, more general character description of yourself. Give this new character description a nickname. Practice associating this new character description and nickname. Practice thinking of yourself in the third person as you do things during the day. e.g. If your new nickname is "Venus" and you are going to the grocery, think "now 'Venus' is going to the grocery" and act like "Venus" would act while on this errand.

CHAMELEON TECH

Edmond A. MacInaugh's book DISGUISE TECHNIQUES - Fool All Of The People Some Of The Time, is as practical and street-wise as THE FUTURE OF THE SELF is analytical and abstract. I highly recommend reading both…both approaches are necessary. MacInaugh's techniques are not thought experiments or film/stage acting tricks (although they could be used as such). They are aimed squarely at the "real" world. In his view all the world really IS a stage…and a playground. I have quoted directly from the concluding chapter of DISGUISE TECHNIQUES below:



If you have mastered the basic techniques of disguise,
learned to recognize the image you present to the world
as well as how to alter it at will to suit your own purposes,
and if you have developed the ability to see others
accurately, then you are ready to test your skills on an
unwitting audience.

Start small; for your first disguise attempts, an ordinary,
non-threatening persona is best. You will find that in the early
stages brief excursions into a different identity will be
enough to get your adrenaline flowing. Practicing in the
privacy of your room is one thing, taking your new self into the
street quite another. Don't worry if you feel foolish or shy
in the beginning, and don't be hard on yourself if you
stammer or find yourself seized with uncontrollable laughter.
Other people won't think too much about it; they are more
concerned about themselves than they are about you. Unless
someone has just seen you rob a bank or hijack a plane, he
won't be inclined to study your appearance.



After you have paid the utmost attention to every detail
of your disguise, you will probably be amazed, possibly even
disappointed, at how unobservant the average person is. The
new you will be accepted at face value; people will tend to
see you just as you present yourself, and act accordingly.
Let's say, for example, that you generally dress and act like
a respectable member of the community, then you disguise
yourself as a bum. You will feel strange as pedestrians look
the other way and make plenty of room for you on the side-
walk, as if your penniless condition were contagious. "Wait
a minute!" you may think. "Can't you tell this is me?"

The answer is no. Of course they can't. You are used to
having people react to you as a respectable sort. That is how
you have presented yourself, albeit unconsciously, by your
choice of clothing, manner, and speech. When you present
yourself as a derelict, why shouldn't people react to you as
a derelict just as naturally?



Experience will increase your self-confidence. Just like
the new kid in school, your disguise personality will slowly
open up and find his own footing, gradually feeling more
comfortable in his new world. Your experiences will bring
you many surprising revelations, not only about the art of
disguise as such, but also about the way others think, feel,
and act, about how society operates, and about yourself and
who you are. Putting yourself in the shoes of a different kind
of person will teach you a great deal about what it is like to
actually be that person, and this knowledge will help you to
further develop your skills.

Ironically, as you become unrecognizable to others, you
will come to know yourself. Through diligent practice of the
art of disguise, you will embark on a voyage of self-discovery
that will continue throughout your life. Even after you have
become a master, there will always be more to learn. So have
a good trip—and good luck!