I’ve been working with a group of young people in a school the last couple of weeks, teaching them about improv. I really think teaching kids about the mechanics of improv, and the values that really make it work are so important and life changing. There’s about 30 kids in this class, a whole spectrum of characters behaviours and attitudes. Some are always looking for the fun, some just want to be obidient. Some bore incredibly fast, some are attentive or the whole workshop. I really hope what I’m saying is really getting through to these kids, before social conformity and compromise dulls them.

I’m simultaneously excited by how much this notion of helping people drives me, and daunted by how many I think could benefit from the ideas in improv that could help them. I care deeply about strangers I’ve barely met because I believe so much of what stops them from being happy is choices an beliefs they are making.

I guess I see a lot of myself in other people, and that I’m still trying to help myself, in the hope that I can learn to help anyone.

OK first go and watch this: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html and this: http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html

I may be remember the content of these wrong, and I can’t wati them just now to check (which I should because I’m about to confuse ken robinson of being wrong, ish…)

well, I think that there are things happening that are leading schools toward nourishing creativity (well at least my awesome new teacher girlfriend is, many others should follow her example.) and they might have a way to go and are doing it at difference speeds but i’m optimistic that in britain we’re getting there. Hurrah! i’m all for the r/evolution (its a semantic, a revolution is just a romanticised evolution.)

However the hierarchy of subjects is a non-starter. All school subjects are of equal value, becuase you can be equally creative in any subject. I’ll just let that sink in and anyone reading this who has strong feelings about whatever school subjects they were great/keech at get their splutterings out of the way. Art and music have just as many rules as grammar and mathematics. The real divider is the judgement. There is a very exact silence about which frequences of notes react in certain ways with others, just as there are rules about 1+1. Colours too, can be measured in very specific light frequencies, even smell can be quantified. Someone somewhere theorized (maybe even proved to a degree) that bach wrote music mathematically, he certainly wrote at a prodigious rate that he certainly wasn’t being hamstringed by being right or wrong, he just did the math and it worked.

So here’s my point. I recently ran a workshop where I compared good improve to good sex. If you ask I’ll repeat it for you But I believe the philosophy of success/discovery is relevant to any field, maths, sex, music, relationship, physics, youtube virality. Exploring the concepts and rules and ceaveats and possibilities of anything means you are being creative. finding out how something works is a creative process, you try things, test things, observe the feedback you are being given. it’s all the same, it’s all a question of your own personal feedback, what does this discovery/creative/explorative process give you? Is it exciting? is it inspiring? that is where you success is. When you are free of the burden of judgement the world is your oyester, you become a toddler in a sea of toys, picking up, bashing, moving, making noises for, neglecting, mixing, all without hesitation. Could you be more content than that?

Tears rain blah blah if you cried hard enough it’d sound like rain, if it could be heard over the sobs. Love love is a verb, a doing word, a doing what? How does one love? surely you’re just doing stuff that demarks your love. It’s all back to those choices again, and how and why we feel.

I bet you any money you don’t know anyone who believes life is complicated or complex who’s also a happy person. It’s usually smart people who are fooled into thinking life is complex or complicated, usually by themselves. I would also be willing to bet that a heck of a lot of smart people have at some point in their life believed that they’d be happier if they were less smart, or even stupid or simple, because life seems to be happier, or at least easier. I gaurantee you though that we really are all playing by the same rules. Sure you might not have the same opportunities, and you might believe that someone else is more talented/experienced/gifted or whatever than you. More often than not these things are excuses. The world is littered full of ‘inspiring’ stories of people overcoming adversity (and it’s quite often insane adversity) and pulling through and achieving their dreams and being happy despite all the things they’ve endured. So why is it when someone has a comparable molehill to overcome they’re rendered useless? Really someone living in the UK should have next to no excuse. You’ve almost definitely got a high school education, you’ve almost definitely got somewhere to live, what more do you need? money? go make some. a job? go get one. what’s going to stop you? other than an unlikely early death the only thing that truly holds you back are your own excuses. (here i’d like to note that i’m a master of making excuses, believe me I could have done all this some time ago, or at least have been making headway, maybe this is how it was meant to be? see i’m straying into excuses again!)

unexcusing yourself is pretty tricky. It can take a lot to unpack all your excuses and dissolve the fear that glues all this stuff together. Lets work on this together eh?

So running on from that last blog post (dont read it, it’s a mess and doesn’t make a lot of sense) boredom is pretty damn similar to depression. So expression must be fun right? But expression is scary and vunerable, depression is a defensive thing right? Kids are crazy expressive and we call them vulnerable people, and have you ever tried to convince a depressed person to change their opinion on something? Mission impossible (because changing is scary and they don’t want to do it even if it might mean becoming happier).

So how best to make expression safe? How best to make change less scary? Trust I assume. How do you build trust? In small steps. Niave blind trust is ill advised, your eyes must always be open to what’s going on, otherwise someone might pull wool over you.

More to come.

Because it’s late, and i’m not sleeping currently. I think because absolutely cack all happens at this time for night, our minds tend to try and find some meaning in the void. Boredom can be awfully misleading if you don’t just let it be boredom. boredom can be pretty useful when you want it to be, if you’re willing to do something. most of the time we just want to be entertained. and hey fair enough, you’re allowed a break. I watch so little TV but its nice just going jack all except veg out infront of a telly, particularly if you don’t veg out any other time. un-beautifully focussed. ugly isn’t the right word but this isn’t beautiful, but it pleases me in a way that beauty might. She’s asleep right now and even if i were with her and I still wasn’t asleep at least I’d be there. I could hold her or kiss her or smell her or listen to her breathe. It’s always the next day when you wake up. This requires you to sleep first, it’s pretty necessary stuff, really throws you when you don’t have enough of it

keep trying, it takes a lot of doing something to get good at it, and that’s mostly because you take an age to tell yourself that you’re doing ok anyway. dont assume you have any control over your success and just do something. sometimes what you do will be incredible, even if only to you, or one other person. significance is fickle. everything is probably.

Perhaps it can be attributed to a hangover but it’s happened plenty of times without alcohol being remotely involved so I’ll blame this phenomenon on something else. You know when you’re tired all day then bed time comes and you suddenly find yourself wide awake, restless even.

What do we do with this time? Is it a gift? Should we be bending our body clock into some handier pattern? Perhaps if I forced productivity in the tired hours my brain would use the nocturnally allocated down time to sleep rather than insist on writing time. My writing time has suffered immensely this year, My brain has been incredibly busy and I decided to at least publicly censor a lot of what would have been public writing, some of it i just didn’t choose to write. At some point long ago in this blog i mentioned elizabeth gilbert talking about artists being the medium for a great idea, rather than art being someone’s personality. Something I’ve re-percieved by reading keith johnstone’s book impro. What idea’s are trying to come out. Maybe they are mine.

I often wish i had a transcript of my brain, alas it happens too fast for me to remember really, I’m sure keith johnstone would laugh at it.

We do censor ourselves, it’s a social thing. Growing up we don’t get the social rules (and at some point we realise there aren’t any, just reactions) so we always try to find the right things to say or do, despite the fact we’re not really sure who’s deciding what’s right and what isn’t (but it’s never us…) Trying to be right always means conforming to someone else’s idea of what right is. And if you want to lead a socially smooth life then I guess conformity is the way to go. You’re unlikely to make enemies by being a conformist (assuming you’re flexible enough to conform with everyone). Conformity is the enemy of creativity though. dammit i totally lost my thread! If you aren’t worried about being right (or pretty much any other adjective you care to name) then you will invariably end up being something. Continuing to create, or avoiding not creating, will lead you to producing many things so long as you aren’t trying to achieve something in particular. that’s a bit milton… Your brain already understands what makes something funny if you’ve ever laughed at something, indeed the more you laugh the more you understand laughter. Your unconscious will be able to crete funny if you let it. If you consciously try to be funny you’ll start censoring everything your mind gives you.

What i’m doing right now is censoring my unconcious. I know what to teach you, or anyone, i’m just blocking it because it isn’t something enough. and I’m still not tired. You can’t harness creativity, you can only ride it bare back and see where it carries you. sorry copying over quotes for later reading.

very tired but:

 

Be yourself, and be whoever you need to be to get the job done. If you’re not doing something then stop being you and be someone who does whatever it is you’re not doing. Every single obligation and rule you life by is fabricated or assimilated by you, so its always your choice to ignore it if you need to.

Bring for the chariot of thought, strapped to the twin beasts of vision and dreams. I stand, whip in hand to crack at the dawn, race forth! May dreams rush in and out like bats across a twilight night. A deep breath. A swallow. Fingers twitch at keys hoping to unlock answers before the questions have revealed themselves. I often wonder at the arrive of inspiration in its many guises, often thundering in with anger, of clawing out with sadness, or bursting all around with excited enthusiasm and passion, sometimes a bolt of purpose. You have drifted in like a fog but with a warmth of sunset, a quiet brought around by the softness of invisible droplets of water but not cool like dew but relaxed at the end of a day, weary but content, but looking at tomorrow. A sigh. I am thirsty and I wonder if you are born of that. A physical manifestation of some desire I’m not aware of. Could you be something that starts something? Or are you the end of something, a moment or particular feeling? Maybe…

Sometimes I sell you short in my mind you know. Maybe I sell each of you short. I am a man of many shades, and I owe so much of my paint and lighting to you all. For all the times I told you or implied that you weren’t good enough, or any time that you simply felt it anyway; you got me this far. That’s good enough. I hope I can do the same.

What’s the deal with you anyway? You’ve stripped off the armour and you’re still kinda at square one. You need to start making choices and following them through. Same as Brian said to me you’ve got to act. Its all fine and well getting into something and rattling the cell bars but you need to level the fuck up. Give up this piteous wank emo thing you’ve got going on. Its an excuse. I know life’s dealt you some bum cards, but like I keep telling you that’s just luck, all you can do is make the most of what you got, which is a lot more than you give yourself credit for. I know you like being emotional, its powerful, it sorts things out. And I know you like being clever too, figuring out brilliant solutions to problems. You inspire yourself. You’ve already got the tools and know how to inspire others, to make a difference where it matters. That’s what you want to do isn’t it? Make a difference.

I’m in a shut down, bubbling, clenching, to what is and isn’t right now. So now what? I’m not really sure what is trying to come out, or what I want to happen just now. I’m searching for a meaning, a lesson to validate this stretch. I’m a fish out of water here, evolving lungs as best I can to breathe tomorrow in. Where is the wise man before dawn? Resting as we all ought to in order to be the day. This is low in my stomach, aching like hunger. It swells like anger, my simplest motivator, that beast which roars to the trembling world and echos around the lonely chasm as stand stunned, grasping for what is left. I daren’t. Scary isn’t a team player. This uncertainty is troubling, shaking my confidence to feel. I ought to sleep, tiredness always gets the better of me and I know I’ll be better in the morrow but my eyes won’t shut, my insides won’t still, the search beams still blaze. I’m looking for something inside me that’ll let me know it is going to be ok. I’ve lost my convincer, my trust in words. I’m desperate for an answer to this, I feel guilty for hiding away here, grabbing for whatever will get me back in the game. My emotional fitness is being tested with a marathon of ettiquette and worry and love and wonder and fear and monotomy and boredom and loneliness and never ever getting to switch off. Many people say, ask for help, I just don’t know who to ask.