Fear Is The Mind Killer

This was originally posted on my tumblr in response to a video Zach Linder posted - an excerpt from Jerry Lewis' film "Errand Boy" - I can only link it on blogspot, but watch it if you can, and then read my response. Or just read my response, it's just about improvSHOCK!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MA3406YJUg

So many reactions to this - but the one thing I want to add is that we should be aspiring to this level of commitment and style today. Especially in improv. The next half-assed scene I see, I am going to scream. In improv, fear manifests itself in a lack of willingness to commit to our scenes. It’s fear that causes ironic detachment, or clinging to some kind of internal scene-world logic instead of fucking reacting to our scene partners and committing to the reality of that scene.

I think we have to give ourselves permission to be AMAZING. Let’s consciously give ourselves permission to be this tight and good and sharp - because if we don’t, we INSTEAD, often unconsciously, give ourselves permission to just fuck around. I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to DO that. I guess what I am trying to say is that we need to give ourselves the permission to fucking RULE, to be amazing and talented - and not the permission to fail.

What I am NOT saying is that we can’t let ourselves fail. It’s improv. We are making shit up. Sometimes, it is going to fail. But we can decide how we are going to fail - spectacularly or ironically. Avoiding failure is just another kind of failure.

Spectacular > Ironic

This is sounding more and more like Amy Poehler’s quote about how she treats improv as her sacred space - as her church. I believe that so much right now. I want to stop judging and just treat that stage and that rehearsal space with that level of commitment. It’s also just a really useful metaphor. Even if you don’t view the improv stage as your personal sacred space (although if you’ve been doing this for more than a couple years and you still don’t think of it that way… not quite sure why you are doing it), you would still respect it as such right? I am not a Christian, but I still respect cathedrals as spaces.

Relax, and have fun, but don’t relax your commitment to sacred success. Let’s give ourselves permission to take ourselves and our performances seriously.

I know it is weird that I have gone on this rant after watching a tightly scripted / timed, non-verbal musical bit from a film. But just because this shit is basically the opposite of improv, and benefits from nearly everything improv specifically eschews doesn’t mean we can’t do shit that is EVEN MORE AWESOME.

Pretty Much Totally Different

In September, I lost my job.

In October, I finally submitted the show I have been hemming and hawwing about finishing, for a spank audition slot at UCB. (I got a date, but it's been moved, so I will update once I know when it will be.)

This week I teched 3 shows, all of which were pretty intense, but I barely fucked up at all. I started a class on Thursday, which was really fun - one of those rare instances were every scene was memorable and fun. It's a 600, and one with a great cast and a great teacher (Kevin Hines), and while it can't possibly be that fun for every class, I am really looking forward to it.

This weekend, at the Creek Fall marathon, I played in 5 improv shows... and I don't know. Nothing really felt right onstage. Not sure why - not really even in a frame of mind to process the shows. I need to be fucking on top of myself about saying yes. Note to self: commitment isn't just the absence of commenting on what's happening onstage .

Today, I finally bought new scents from Bath and Bodyworks, went through the box of possessions my old work sent me, recycled a bunch of stuff, cleaned a fair amount, rearranged some furniture and had a hot chocolate.

Tomorrow, I train for a part time job, start another new class, and tech Whiplash. Nervous about all three.

Bed time. Brain, quit being such a dick, k thnx baaaaai.

So I took some time off...

I am going back through and trying to catch up on my friend's posts. It's nice to do. I am reminded of how impressive and intelligent and charming most of my friends are, at least in writing.

I am not sure exactly why I have not felt compelled to write anything on this blog for 6 weeks. I have been updating in an incessant and irritating matter on my tumblr site. That link is http://rubysneakers.tumblr.com/ if you are interested in the videos I find and random musings I provide on a daily, did I mention irritating, basis.

My life since June 1st has been a bit of a roller coaster, although I supposed most times in my life seem remarkable for their up and down emotional / event energy, when in fact, most daily experience is far more average than that. However, I would further qualify that by adding that despite that belief, it has felt both wildly emotional and blessedly calm and sans anxiety.

I had a birthday, some parties, cried a lot, went on vacation, ate a lot, felt gross, felt cute, felt fucking stupid, felt hilariously smart, went swimming, called India and China, procrastinated, felt worthless, had a crush, listened to a lot of music, read a bunch of books, watched a fair amount of TV and also of improv, had the world crush in on itself, danced for no reason, danced FOR a reason, went barefoot, got a light sunburn, and had my wallet stolen.

That is neither a complete nor a chronological account.

Let's see if I keep this up! Now I am off to Kmart!

JUNE! JUNE! JUNE!

it's 14 days until my birthday. as a kid, my birthday was often either close - to or the actual last day of school. it was pretty awesome. the middle day of the middle month shall once again be the most looked forward day of the year! i am focusing on june being awesome, if only in my reaction to stuff. i am kicking off this determination by watching arrested development while compiling expense reports. ONWARDS AND UPWARDS!

fascinating improv read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_de_Maat

having had christina gausas for a class recently, and currently being in a VERY deeply reflective period, reading about this gentleman really puts a fire in my bones about teaching and coaching. i have been thinking about constructive notes - notes that basically instruct you in a way of getting over a hump or difficulty or habit, without necessarily explaning what that barrier is, and descriptive notes, which tell you what you are doing wrong without necessarily helping you get past it. i really want to start coaching soon. the teacher often learns more than the student and i really need to learn.

the other thing i have been thinking about is playing honest and playing real... i am still missing something in my 'real' reactions. they are often still too commentate-y. but when i try to react 'in character' i end up doing a false, improv-y reaction. i have to work on that. not sure how.

once i finish this current class i am in (gethard 504), i am class-less for awhile. i have been told it's a good thing to have a break... but i don't think it is. i want to keep working on stuff. if i stop, i am absolutely going to backslide into my worst habits. it's inevitable. i don't have a regularly rehearsing group right now, so i will likely only do the occasional show all summer unless i put together another group... ugh sauce. no deal.

in other news, if anyone sees one of the reusable VENTI starbucks cold cups that look like the real cold cups, buy it and i will pay you for it. be sure to check the bottom of the mug though, the grande reusable cups are the same size as the disposable venti cups. the venti reusable cups are taller and say '20 ounces' on the bottom. woot.

back up, start it again

i feel like going backwards.

like i AM going backwards.

frustrated and tired and dull.

in so many things in my life, i wish my reaction to pain and frustration wasn't negative.

even happy cat isn't doing it for me today:

just measure my damn chest

i've gone to three different stores trying to get measured for a bra. i know every bra i am wearing right now is the WRONG size. however, every single time i go in, i get overwhelmed and freaked out and then i pretend i am shopping for something else entirely. today, i even bought something else. i don't know who i was trying to fool, it's not like anyone else knew i what i was planning to do when i walked in the gap. also, i used to work at the gap, i hated having to measure people for bras, i don't want someone else to have to do that. it's just weird. i don't let anyone else look at my lady bits, what makes YOU different, woman in a black suit at victoria's secret? hmmm?!

re: the gap, both things i bought today were terrible and are going back tomorrow. along with the jeans i bought last week. apparently i think i am made of money. also, i bought the new jeans before realizing that i'd lost 10-15 pounds and i am sure that won't stay off since 1) i like my ass and 2) the 'don't eat lunch because you don't have time at work and then forget to eat dinner since your night was filled with activities that don't provide easy access to filling food' diet is probably not going to catch on.

my birthday is soon. i am trying to decide what to do for it. i'd like to find a bar/restaurant with an outdoor area which is fairly inexpensive and is not way out of my way (since it's my birthday y'all). i am definitely doing something this year. i didn't last year and it was sucky. suggestions welcome.

the laundromat was closed for memorial day. thusly, i washed socks in the sink. big whiskey and the groogrux king er, leaked. sorry, DMB. i, of course, plan on buying for legit soon. actually, it will probably be my last purchase at virgin union square. i am intrigued by some aspects, disappointed by others, and made hopeful by others. so much better than i was fearing. i plan on listening to it a lot more and really trying to get into it. update to come. yeah probably not.

'LOST' is a club

one i could easily join, and yet persist in avoiding because of laziness. oh hey, childhood. what's up.

CYCLES.

twitter and tumblr are full of my random thoughts much more than this ole thang recently. i think in part because i feel the need to be serious or honest here, and i don't feel much like doing either of late.

in fact, that's not true - i just don't feel like engaging in either emotion in order to write. surface level is easier than deep.

look octopus!

Why It Is Important

I am failing at being articulate today so I am posting the mostly unexpanded / edited thoughts I had last night, in response to my improv instructor's comments about not 'doing it for Harold night/quitting if you don't get on a team'.

I do it because of it, not for it. This is the first time in my life I have worked this hard at something i am not good pretty quickly. I have that kind of personality, as much as I try to fight it. I am lazy and I like to be successful and have people notice how successful I am. Improv is... the sustained 'want' of it is so visible and apparent -- a want that is visible not only to one other person, the way a confessed crush would be, or perhaps to an additional handful of friends, but rather apparent to EVERYONE in the community whose opinion and talent AND friendship you value. To put this into some kind of perspective, I don't open myself up to that kind of inspection and subsequent rejection in ANY other part of my life. In fact, I assiduously avoid it, to the point where I don't even tell people I have crushes on them until 2 years after they've moved to another state.

That's a little bit why it makes us so crazy. The want is deep and fresh and apparent... and it makes it harder to pull any positive emotion out over that scorned hurt. And at the end of the day... I understand people not being able to deal with that, and just leaving over the pain of it. I get it. If you love the game/girl/boy/artform, and the game/girl/boy/artform keeps rejecting you... man it's hard to keep at it.

I should add that you should not stalk people. Not even two years later when they've moved to a different state.

In 'conclusion', if I am not on a team in X number of years... which is likely given the breadth and depth of talent in NYC improv right now... I will stop trying, eventually. I assume. I don't know. I don't want to stop trying... but I can imagine a situation where quitting trying is the best thing to do for me. Anyway. Read above note on articulation ability today.

i ALWAYS do this

when the woman i get on the phone on AmEx travel is the dumb one, i pretend i am getting a call from my boss and that i will have to take it and call them back, as opposed to trying to deal with her.

she'd screwed up travel stuff several times though for my people so i think i am justified in it. i just feel like an asshole every time i do it.

no sign of love behind the tears

i am expressing my mood via clothing today. i am wearing earth tones. but... well... imagine i am wearing black.

i joined twitter, sorry.

sometimes i just want to punch everyone in the face, and sometimes i just want to laugh and have fun.

focusing is for suckers. i should have taken today off, i think.

this one is pretty too

i have been doing well writing in my non-internet journal - 'well' meaning that i have been doing it regularly and i think the insights i am gaining from the process are valuable. no need to talk about it more than that, really, but i did have a really crazy day yesterday. moods bouncing from medium to blackly upset but with no energy to even react to anything; i sat on the train unable to write, read my book or even play solitare on my ipod (that's bad, trust me). but somehow, when i got into my apartment, i proceeded to clean the fuck out of my room, AND rearrange my bed, and sweep and do two loads of laundry... that's a lot for me. sometimes it really is better to just do something blindly physical / vaguely compulsive than to sit and just write or stew.

however, i ended up putting my bed back in close to it's original position - my head was right near the loud, dirty window which is just not acceptable to me. i am still considering new configurations for it, but there aren't a ton of good permuations for the shape of my room. but i was willing to make the change, for the first time since i moved in in 2006. (yikes)

i also didn't talk to anyone all evening, even on gchat. well i posted on a messageboard some, but that is less interactive. anyway, that's interesting to me because i am very social, and even if i am sitting there quietly, i am still being social, most of the time. since i didn't have anyone to share it with, and i kind of love it, i am sharing my status messages for part of the evening:

katey healy-wurzburg
♫ left my glasses at the OTHER end of the apartment. fuck it.
katey healy-wurzburg
♫ got my glasses. oh, i'm watching HELLBOY. i wondered why phoebe looked all red and chandler was on fire.

eh? eh? no? okay fine.
busy weekend coming up.

this is my journal

isn't it pretty? i think so.

emoodtional

Yeah, that was terrible.

I have a few thoughts I will hobble together.

I bought a new pretty journal for keeping track of my moods. The pages are color coded; purple for happy and related contenment, red for rage and related obsessions, blue-green for sad sack bitching. I hope I am able to keep it up, and I think it might help my efforts to be more rational in my assessment of my own behavior. Is it weird that I am trying to do that? I think it is.

I am considering stopping drinking soda. As much. Cutting back on stuff generally. I suppose it is standard to feel fat and gross and squidgy when the weather turns nicer. Did I mention cottage-cheesy and pale and a variety of other skin-based issues?

On that attractive note, I've had SUCH relationship envy lately. I am not sure what's bringing it about. Maybe just impending 26-dom. But combined with my sudden interest in potentially putting my mouth on other mouths... it's a weird time in katey-land, internet.

My life has thus far been starved in the realm of experience.

I don't think it's possible to truly articulate heartbreak rationally with words. And that's why we have art.

My legs are so tired. I wore my sort-of-heeled flats on Saturday and then accidentally did a lot of walking in them. For the evening I switched to sneakers so it was okay. Today it was NINETY FIVE DEGREES outside so I broke out the sandals. They're comfortable, but not supportive enough so my feets get tired almost immediately, which I hate. My feet seem to be hot-wired directly into my 'function-normally' center of my brain. I honestly don't understand people who can just kick around in whatever, or barefoot. The higher-functioning aspects of my brain sort of shut off if my feet are not totally supported and dry and warm. If someone were to make a Maslow's pyramid of needs for me (about me?), the base would be: food, then foot comfort, then rest of clothes, then emotional support system, then Starbucks.

Regardless, I spent the day walking around in my sandals, until I got to Shoemania and bought an entirely different pair of summer shoes. They are probably ugly, but they are comfortable and cool (temperature-wise) so WHATEVEERRRRR FASHION SUCK MY DICK!

Then I walked some more, slightly more comfortably. It really was beautiful out. My skin smells like air and sun and all the good parts of summer in New York City. Jealous?

Today's Random Note From My Notebook:
remember this good feeling and choose at every moment to pursue such contentment.

it can be that simple.

HERE BE DRAGONS, AND THEY ARE BETTER THAN YOU.

guess what country has the best flag? WALES DOES BECAUSE IT HAS A DRAGON!

they aren’t even a real country and they still have the best flag. jealous, america? well you should have thought of that before you decided to invest in pussy straight lines and intersecting diagonals INSTEAD OF A DRAGON.

another quote about humanity

You have this thing you call... boredom! It is the rarest talent in the universe! We heard a song - it went 'Twinkle twinkle little star...' What power! What wondrous power! You can take a billion trillion tons of flaming matter, a furnace of unimaginable strength, and turn it into a little song for children! You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your mind, and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming!

-Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

lyrics to 'a new day at midnight' THE SONG

oh my word i've never seen
a day so golden, earth so green
put my face into the street
that i might see what might have been
all my heart time has flowed
feet that pass along the stone
i hardly recognize my home
all the paths that've overgrown
the music and the laughter gone

oh my soul it never felt
so free of all the chains i built
all the shame and all the guilt
are vanished now beneath the silt
i'm striding across orion's belt

oh my word i have
oh my word i have
oh my word i
oh my word i...

i have been trying to find the lyrics to this song for awhile. it's confused by the fact that david gray named an album 'a new day at midnight' without including the song 'a new day at midnight' on the album. however, the lyrics issue is TRIPLY confused by the fact that the phrase 'a new day at midnight' doesn't appear in the song at all either. which is pretty unusual for mr. gray. and i can only find one mediocre quality recording online, confused, again, by the title.

in 2007 (at least) he played the song a few times live, explaining that the song was inspired by his reaction to the birth of his daughter not proceeding as simply as he expected it to be (aw). interesting (to me) because he's notoriously private about his personal life.

actually, none of the key words in the name appear in the song. sigh. regardless, here are the lyrics as i have transcribed them (poorly). link that, internet!

the limitations of blogger become clearer.

Nicole: I did not realize

that during the entire whole foods bit

you were wearing a moustache

like, it didn't register

we are insane

i changed the name of my blog.

and now for an unrelated story: last friday night i walked across manhattan wearing a fake* black moustache. and surprisingly, got a ridiculous number of compliments from all manner of passersby. it was an interesting experiment, and fascinating that every comment i heard (at least) was either overtly complimentary or neutral in tone. admittedly a fair number of those comments were a just a way of letting their friends know that they just saw a girl with a moustache walk by, but it was still interesting that they oriented them in a positive manner.

the best one i got was from a middle aged woman who shouted back at me as i pushed by her group that i was 'looking good!'

the best part was alan and i whining / throwning fits in whole foods to our mom nicole who was trying to hurry up our dinner selections and not letting me get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! or alan get his chocolate milk. that was silly fun.

fun! next time i will pretend it's real, maybe.

*shocking, i know. i actually had it on upside down for most of my walk. embarrassing!

get dressed and then we'll call you and cancel and you can try to go back to sleep

that happened to me twice this weekend. the first, saturday, was weather related, and fine, really since i like sleep. and it was dark and raining out so i could actually fall asleep again. however, it happened AGAIN on sunday when i was supposed to go visit family in poughkeepsie. i texted my dad to let him know that i would be getting in at 11:30 since i missed the 8:58 am train (because fuck that), and then i got a frantic text -> call from my mom FLIPPING out and telling me not to come. i was barely awake and didn't understand why being an hour later made it POINTLESS for me to come visit, since my aunts were leaving today, monday, and not sometime sunday afternoon. actually i still don't understand it, since it doesn't make any sense. but whatever, my mom was feeling tense and worried and i didn't want to exacerbate it so i just agreed to visit them later in the month and go back to sleep - which is what i wanted to do anyway... gah confusion! mooooom come on!

i realized later that night that i should have just invited the nuclear unit into the city for the afternoon; that could have been fun. and it was a lonely easter. damn barnes and noble closed at 7 so i ended up going to whole foods and virgin records instead and buying a couple CDs (john legend and a genesis collection - score!) and a DVD of 'close', which is supposed to be very good. it's probably just going to make me wish i had the soundtrack instead though. bummer.

i think i am going to start using like... capitalization and shit on this blog. i have sort of been neglecting this one lately, in general, especially when compared to my manic effusion of content on my tumblr. it's just a lot easier to use than blogspot (is it blogger? i really don't like that name; i am going to persist in calling it blogspot).

i know i have booked my show this week, but i can't remember the teams i confirmed for the life of me. i hate it when i do that. but i remember liking the line up as i made it... i need to leave myself more easily accesible notes of my thought processes.

i don't think i have slept more than 5 hours in an row in probably 3 or 4 weeks. but i feel mostly fine, which is a problem in itself.

NO THROUGHLINE FOR THIS POST EITHER, AWESOME, WAY TO GO.