Erotophronesis

Like Shakespeare, I like to invent words. However, unlike his, I don’t think mine will catch on. Like this one:

EROTOPHRONESIS

Go ahead. Try to say it. Rolls right off the tongue.

The word “philosophy” as you probably know, comes from the roots philia and sophia and is usually translated as “love of wisdom.”

But those clever Greeks had other words for love and wisdom.

Eros, as you also probably know, is the kind of love that lies in the body. Unlike philia, which is an abstract, transcendental form of affection, eros is sexually-charged desire with the potential to incite change, growth, or chaos.

Related to the word for light, sophia is the kind of wisdom that you gain through looking; it’s the result of outside observation paired with thoughtful consideration. Phronesis, however, was used by ancient Greeks to describe knowledge that develops through first-hand experience. While sophia helps you contemplate the nature of the world, phronesis must be used to determine a course of action that will generate change. Phronesis is something that comes with age and practice and that can’t be explained through words or pictures.

Erotophronesis. Erotic love of embodied knowledge.

The term isn’t very catchy. But the concept is a virus that I’d like to spread.

Fire in my Belly: Watch Now!

Take four minutes out of your day.

Give them to the painful and soulful vision of artist/activist David Wojnarowicz, who recently ascended to renewed prominence after the Smithsonian pulled his super-8 film Fire in my Belly from their exhibit entitled "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture." Apparently Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS-related illnesses in 1992, was showing too much of his difference, and not hiding his desire well enough for some tastes.

The film was made in 1986/87 in honor of a friend and fellow artist who had recently died of AIDS. For those of us who don't remember that time, this was before AZT and cocktail drugs, when a diagnosis was a death sentence. The government was ignoring the plight of thousands living with HIV, viewing them as more of a threat to be managed than a populace to be cared for. Death was close by, and Wojnarowicz's haunting film captures the urgency and intimacy of this very recent time in history that some would prefer to forget.

Go all out. Full-screen it. Give yourself the experience.

David Wojnarowicz "A Fire in My Belly" - Smithsonian, National Portrait Gallery Edit from ppow_gallery on Vimeo.

Note that the original film was silent, and 13 minutes in length. The above version, which was pulled from the Smithsonian, has been edited and supplemented with a soundtrack of original recordings from ACT UP! protests in the 1980s.

Also, lets all take a moment to remember that the HIV/AIDS crisis is not over. Worldwide, 2 million people die every year from AIDS-related illnesses and each year 3 million more acquire the disease. While many of these new cases are far removed from New York's West Village, the call to action is still as important as it was in 1986. ACT UP! FIGHT AIDS!

Devising the Bible, Myself

This week in my directing seminar we presented short devised works based on the King James Bible. With such a wide-open field of possibility, each piece was unique and deeply reflective of its maker and his or her relationship to spirituality, organized religion, and the human encounter with greater-than-human elements like death, love, or a divine power. Much more so than in traditional scenework, in devised work the passions and obsessions of the director spring forth shamelessly. Faced with the empty space of script-less-ness, one's own internal conflicts and pleasures must twist themselves into new and original forms.

Initially overwhelmed with my options (should I work on Adam and Eve? Revelations? Mary Magdalene?), I eventually found inspiration in a Grotowski text I was reading, titled coincidentally, "The Theatre's New Testament."

"The spectator understands that such an act [the actor's rigorous self-exposure] is an invitation to him to do the same thing, and this often arouses opposition or indignation, because our daily efforts are intended to hide the truth about ourselves not only from the world, but also from ourselves. We try to escape the truth about ourselves, whereas here we are invited to stop and take a close look. We are afraid of being changed into pillars of salt if we turn around, like Lot's wife." (Towards a Poor Theatre, p. 37)

Suddenly hit by the lightning bolt of creative excitement, I jumped online and found Lot's wife nestled into Genesis 19. Nameless and powerless (like too many Biblical women) she is punished for embodying -- in a single backwards glance -- her sense of grief at God's wrathful destruction of the notoriously queer desert cities Sodom and Gomorrah.

Like the actor who reveals herself onstage, devising is a place in which the director can look closely at herself through the scalpel of someone else's story. In my case I used Lot's wife as a vehicle for self-exposure and self-reflection. Like Lot's wife, I desire to look back: to take time to contemplate and mourn the pain I've witnessed both first and secondhand. Like Lot's wife, I am not ashamed of my connection to people and places that a vengeful God might deem sinful. In her story I feel rumblings of my fear of calcification, my longing for transformation, and my ambiguous relationship with the power of flight.

All art can be considered a calcification of experience - the bringing into solid form what was once awash in undulating formlessness. While no one wants to be turned into a pillar of salt, sometimes bearing witness to pain and destruction means taking the risk of turning around anyway.

"Be Friends!" Or, love and collaboration

Beckett's radio play Words and Music concerns the collaboration between the titular characters, who work together to satisfy the musical desires of their lord. Commissioned by the BBC in 1962, it was a collaboration between Beckett and his cousin, the composer John Beckett. The project was apparently somewhat fraught, and after the original recording, John withdrew his score.

My girlfriend, who also happens to be one of my closest artistic collaborators, spent eight hours today remixing excerpts from Holst's "The Planets" into 33 distinct sound cues for our version of Words and Music. Sometimes I count the number of hours she spends designing and wonder why the director gets top billing. At 10pm, we tech'd through the cues. Despite the late hour and our limited vocabulary discussing symphonic music, we fell into a productive and pleasurable rhythm: "I think it should cut off after the 'dum dum dum!'" "The first 'dum dum dum' or the second one?" "Well, definitely before that xylophone comes in," "Yeah, there's no xylophone in Beckett."

For me, love and collaboration go hand in hand. Finding someone I click with creatively is like finding a new lover. When I feel that spark lit, I start fantasizing about when we can next work together and on what source text. Like with a romantic relationship, you can't fake a good collaboration. Trust and communication can be built over time, but it all starts with a recognition and a pull, the thrill of similarity glimpsed across difference.

Words says to Music at the top of the play: "How much longer cooped up here in the dark? With you!" But by the middle of the piece they are singing together, breathing meaning into sound, improvising a new path through the dark space between them.

First Impressions

As mature, compassionate, considerate adults, we're encouraged not to put too much faith in our first impressions. Judging a book by its cover is bad form.

But I find in directing theatre that paying attention to my first impressions is essential. Most actors know that their audition begins the second they walk in the door. Playwrights know that the professionalism of their title page --even their font!-- will reflect on their script.

In my directing seminar at Stanford I was recently asked to read a book of short plays by Beckett and pick one to direct. As any fan of Beckett knows, his plays are dense and can take a long time to fully digest. The book arrived late in the mail and class was rapidly approaching. I found myself speeding through these impossibly complex plays, searching for a foothold on what they meant, wondering how in God's name I'd choose without really understanding.

Then I flipped by one in particular. Words and phrases started jumping out at me: "love," "age," "a gleam of tooth biting on the under," "all dark no begging /no giving no words." I had no idea what it meant. And as a PhD student, I really like to know what things mean.

But class was looming and it was time to commit. I grabbed this first impression with all my strength and proclaimed my intention to direct Beckett's radio play Words and Music for my first assignment.

Sometimes it seems like the rational mind can justify anything: "No, it's good that the scenic carpenters messed up on the construction of the banister, the wobbliness symbolizes the fragility of the entire society!" First impressions, like the reflexes that help us pull our hand away from a hot stove, don't allow the time for justification. The reflex arc moves energy and information from your body straight to your spine and back (bypassing the brain entirely) in order to take quick action.

In terms of aesthetics, who can say what instant personal psychic calculus results in that reflexive flash of interest? Why did this play feel hot in my hands when the ones before and after it just confused me? All I know is that when I went home that evening and read the play thoroughly, I fell in love. It's deeper and stranger and funnier and harder than I'd have guessed upon first impression. But the challenge feels like the right challenge.

I've found that trusting this flash of interest, of desire, of excitement --however subtle-- often puts me on a path that my rational mind only partially understands. Careful consideration is important and the ability to question one's initial assumptions is certainly key to being a good human being, but I consider it part of my artistic practice to attend to that flashing fish of desire as it breaks the surface of the lake.