Transcending Borders: The Frayed Edges of Imagination

Robert Mcneer, Italy. (Plenary for the Steiner English Week 2004, held at Altenberg, Germany.)

Though it is true/that fire is the enemy of water, /moist heat is the creator of all things: /discordant concord is the path life needs."

A great Kabuki actor, near the end of his life, said to his disciples: "I can show you the form of 'looking at the moon.' I can teach you the proper sequence of the proper postures, from the soles of your feet to the tip of your finger. But, from the tip of your finger to the moon, that's your responsibility."

I think this is a good thumbnail sketch of what truly inspirational art does: it challenges us in that way. It reminds us-and in this case the term "remind" is particularly apt: it literally re-minds us-- that true perception is a creative act, and it does so by inviting us to partake in that act of creation. I, the audience, the spectator, am invited onstage, as it were, to sing in the chorus of creation. In this sense great art is open-ended: not representation but evocation, and though it may show us the way, from the tip of our fingers to the moon, that's the responsibility of each of us.

This is the theme of my speech: seeing borders not as obstacles, but as opportunities. Your attitude toward your own borders can significantly change the experience you have of them, can decide, in fact, whether you'll transcend them at all.

When I was 25 I took part in a workshop in Japan which included an exhibition of Indian Kathakali dance. An actress danced one of the scenes of the "Mahabharata." I don't remember the names of the characters, but it was a classical scene of jealousy, such as we find often also in Greek mythology: the god has been out cavorting with the nymphs all night long, now it's dawn and he comes home to find that his wife, the goddess, is waiting for him at the door, immobile and furious. It's a wonderful scene, as we enjoy his denial, her fury, his braggadocio, her petulance, his remorse, the growing Eros between them, and finally their loving reconciliation, all very recognizable human situations, which one can enjoy greatly without understanding the intricacies of Kathakali dance, all danced brilliantly by a lone actress, performing both the god and the goddess, in full regalia: costume jewels, mirrors and makeup. This was an actress in her prime: I would say, about 40, by turns swaggering, pouting, alluring: beautifully, sensually vibrant, like a ripe fruit bursting with Eros-a joy to observe.

But her guru, who was present, was not altogether satisfied. There were some points which he would like to see developed differently. So he gets up and dances it: does the same dance, or rather the same choreography, for it's a completely different dance in his body. He's over 70 years old, like a small, dried twig, wearing a t-shirt and jeans: I remember when he stood up I had an image of clothing hanging on a clothes hanger. So he stands up, the musicians start playing, and he turns his head. Just his head: no arms, no chest breathing, no mudras, just head and eyes. And it's all there: suddenly the air is electric with tension. No makeup, no costume, no flirting with the audience: just the essence of betrayal. Then he's the husband, playing at penitence, and we see the duplicity, but also the need to be loved…he's like an empty pocket. Well, it was incredibly moving. I can't say it was better or worse: it didn't have the shiny brilliance of her performance, but it had something else: a depth in the simplest gestures.

In "Secrets of the Noh," which is a 15th century treatise on acting written by a Japanese master named Zeami, he talks about the stages an actor goes through, which he calls the "three flowers." The first stage is that of the beauty of the skin: the actor radiates a kind of beauty through his skin, and this beauty will accompany the actor up to the age of about 25 years. Of course in Hollywood the careers of many actors have consisted entirely of this phase-and consequently plastic surgery is very good business there-- but we're talking about Noh theatre here, not Hollywood. After 25, the actor enters the next phase, that of the beauty of the muscle. This is a phase in which the joy of watching the actor consists in an admiration for his use of technique. Sean Penn comes to mind.
At about 45, the actor no longer has the physique to perfectly execute his technique. At this point, he must take stock, deciding what he can do, and what he can no longer or will never do. Interestingly enough, according to Zeami this is when he should start teaching, for his relationship with his students will stimulate his internal growth, and prepare him for the last flower. At about 55, the actor enters the phase of the last flower, which has the beauty of the bone. At this point the actor's technique seems to evaporate: he doesn't seem to be doing anything at all, and yet we are profoundly moved. I think of Marcello Mastroiani's last years.

When I read this, it rang true, because it explained what I had seen in Japan in that intergenerational dance performance, and it was perhaps the first time that respect for my elders made a kind of cosmic sense, was more than just being polite to someone who will probably die before I will.
That respect is not for an individual, but for a deepened experience. The last words of "King Lear" are Edgar's: "The weight of this sad time we must obey,/ Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say./ The oldest hath born most, we who are young/ Shall never see so much, nor live so long."
It is not that "we who are young" cannot see, or bear what Lear bears and sees, but if we do, we will no longer be ourselves, we will have transcended that boundary which defines us as "we who are young." That's why at 25 I couldn't possibly have rendered what that guru did at 75. The guru doesn't attempt to hide or fight his frailty: quite the contrary, he accepts it as his yoke, and thus facilitates a mysterious transformation: that yoke becomes, no longer a constraint, but rather a union-that which unites him with humanity, in this case the audience.

I think a compassionate teacher can cultivate this discovery, in which the student's apparent limit can reveal itself as a bridge, which unites him with the world, which spans the fearful gap between himself and the other, but it's important that you, the teacher, recognize the "limit," not as an obstacle, but as an opportunity, and invite the student to enjoy, rather than fight, the quality that he has. For that border is a very rich, very fertile zone. For instance, if you have a student very timid about using her voice, it's probably counterproductive to ask her to sing Figaro, for instance, or Die Walküre: that's exactly what she won't do, because she's afraid, and the nature of fear is contraction. But if you have the others close their eyes and ask her to make the sound of a sunset, you might unlock something in her. I often find this kind of synesthetic crossover very liberating.
We close our eyes while she graces us with the sound of sunset. By the way, this will work ONLY if you, the teacher, honestly have no preconception about the correct sound of a sunset: if there is one molecule of your being prepared to judge the response, then you're lost from the start. You must remain very light, because you're facilitating a bridge, and it could collapse: the artist-in this case the timid student--- has to create a connection between what everyone knows-a sunset is red, and what only she knows-a sunset sounds like this… This is for me what transcending boundaries is about - a sense of union. "I know you through me, I know me through you" Because it's the listening, as much as the sound, which creates the act. The other students, eyes closed, listening for the sound of sunset, can maintain a wave of attention which invites that transcendence.

In an essay on the poetry of Derek Walcott entitled "The Sound of the Tide," Joseph Brodsky writes:

Because civilizations are finite, in the life of each of them comes a moment when centers cease to hold. What keeps them at such times from disintegration is not legions but languages…The job of holding at such times is done by the men from the provinces, from the outskirts. Contrary to popular belief, the outskirts are not where the world ends-they are precisely where it unravels. That affects a language no less than an eye.

He goes on to explore what that means in the poetry of Derek Walcott, who grew up in the Caribbean, at the outskirts of the English language. Brodsky speaks of the linguistic riches of Walcott's upbringing, in an English in contact with "French, Hindu, Creole patois, Swahili, Japanese, Spanish…" In one of his poems, Walcott speaks like this:

I'm intrigued by this image of the unravelled edge, the rough interface between the empire and the unknown. Brodsky places the poet historically on the edge of the empire, but Walcott makes of himself a nation-"either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation"-so that the edge of this microcosmic empire is the skin of this "red nigger who love the sea."

There's a sequence of massage I sometimes use in teaching in which the students massage one another first with an attention to the structure of the bones, and the articulation of the skeleton. Then they bring their attention to the muscles, using the massage to free the muscular flow of movement. Finally they proceed to the skin, using the most subtle means, sometimes barely touching or skimming, sometimes just using the breath or the heat of their hands to stimulate the skin. And often the most amazing thing happens: people start crying. Not in the deep massage of the bones or the rigorous muscular manipulation. People are most deeply moved in the feather-light fairy-touch of the skin. The first times this happened I was surprised, and I must say its still a wonder to me. But as I've thought about it over the years I've realized it has its logic. The skin, as we've experimented today, is the uncertain place where I stop and the world begins, where me ends, and not-me begins, where the constant negotiation with the other takes place. It is precisely here, I think, that our most creative work takes place, at our edges, at our limits, and I would propose that the more comfortable we are navigating that zone, the deeper, the more far-reaching our creativity will be

And yet this separation itself is an illusion, as the mystics of every religion remind us, and it is in the exploration, explicit or implicit, of this illusion, that any art worth the name is born. Teilhard de Chardin expressed it thus:

The farther and more deeply we penetrate into matter, by means of increasingly powerful methods, the more we are confounded by the interdependence of its parts…It is impossible to cut into this network, to isolate a portion without it becoming frayed and unravelled at all its edges.

I believe that there is something in the spirit of each of us which recognizes the artificiality of this separation, which is unsatisfied with this frayed quality. This is the part of us which struggles with the feeling that reality, the ultimate reality, is always just escaping, always just around the corner, behind the horizon, or just glimpsed through a glass, darkly. The solitary romantic hero, battling with the elements, trying to penetrate nature's truth with the force of his will, embodies this struggle. But this willed, upward striving is not alone enough to accompany us through the frayed edges which seem to blur our perception of reality. There is also a crucial balancing factor.

The mystic tradition of the Cabala presents us with a very useful image here, that of the zefirot. The zefirot is a ladder of experience, later adopted by the Neoplatonists to trace the progress of the philosophical adept. Each rung of the ladder is a crisis of development which will either be overcome, to be followed by the next rung, or succumbed to, at which point the adept falls off the ladder altogether. (I've always suspected that the children's game "snakes and ladders" came from this model.) But the most interesting point, for me, is not the rungs, but the verticals of this ladder. Of course you need two verticals, or the rungs have nothing on which to stand. In the cabala tradition, one vertical is "justice," the other, "mercy." These are two forces which must be in harmony for the ladder to stand at all. In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Portia speaks eloquently of the need for mercy to balance justice's harsh reality. In the court of law, Shylock asks on what compulsion he must show mercy, and she replies:

So we have here two complementary forces: the individual will striving upwards towards the absolute truth, and divine compassion, which, in Portia's exquisite phrase, "falleth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath." It is, I think, in the balance between these two forces that we truly transcend our boundaries. If we think of the upward striving energy as fire, and the downward grace, with Portia, as water, then those lines from Ovid´s Metamorphoses resonate more fully:

Though it is true/that fire is the enemy of water, /moist heat is the creator of all things: /discordant concord is the path life needs.

By the way, it's interesting to note that what we have here is a woman pretending to be a man invoking Jewish mystical tradition to defeat a Jew in a Catholic court of law. Or, if we take one more step back, a boy-actor pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man pretending to defeat a gentile pretending to be a Jew on a stage pretending to be a Catholic court of law in a country where at that time the actual practice of Catholicism would be rewarded with beheading. That we are truly, and deeply moved by all this pretence attests to the tremendous force of imagination; both Shakespeare's, and ours.

So it's not just about struggle, it's also about acceptance. Much Sufi mystic poetry is dedicated to this acceptance. The soul is often portrayed as a woman, longing for god's embrace,. I'd like to share with you a few poems from Hafiz, the great Persian Sufi master, which express beautifully the need and benefits of surrendering to grace, in order to transcend our (apparent) limits, to reweave the frayed edge left by tearing our Self out of creation's infinite embrace:

Without Brushing My Hair

The
Closer
I get to you, Beloved,
The more I can see
It is just You and I all alone
In this
World.
I hear
A knock at my door,
Who else could it be,
So I rush without brushing
My hair.

For too
Many nights
I have begged for Your
Return

And what
Is the use of vanity
At this late hour, at this divine season,
That has now come to my folded
Knees?

If your love letters are true dear God
I will surrender myself to
Who you keep saying
I
Am.

Often the poet portrays himself as a drunk, forever raising his voice in an ecstatic, raucous, late night chorus, awash in the infinite joy and playfulness which come from the act of surrender:

Cucumbers and Prayers

All day long
The earth shouts
"Gee, thanks."

Such an exuberant gee,
It starts throwing
Things

As if God were passing by in a parade encouraging
Rowdy behaviour
By looking so beautiful-
That a whole avalanche of mania swoops in!

I like this idea of throwing things at God,
And especially-His making us rowdy!

Thus, as soon as Hafiz is out of bed
I start stuffing large sacks
Of old shoes, cucumbers,
And
Prayers

For the upcoming
Consecrated

Free-for-all-
And who knows
What else.

Two Giant Fat People

God

And I have become

Like two giant fat people

Living in a

Tiny boat.

We

Keep

Bumping into each other and

L
a
u
g
h
i
n
g
.

I think the balance between these two movements - the striving upward movement and the crazy, playful rendering of Hafiz - is that which enables us to transcend our boundaries.

It's my experience that the more we can explore the nature of our boundaries in this spirit of focused surrender, the more we can revel in their "frayedness," the more creative we become. Because in this way we begin to experience that unravelled quality, not as a danger, but as an opportunity, as a constant invitation to interact with the sensual world around us. Danger and opportunity. As an actor, one has a lot of truck with those twins. I understand the Chinese ideogram for "crisis" consists of two figures: the figure for "danger," and that for "opportunity." I think our borders, in that sense, are real "crisis zones." Whether we choose to live them fundamentally as zones of danger or of opportunity is one that has profound, and far-reaching consequences.

Again, I think a sensitive teacher can enormously influence the attitude that the student has to that which is outside his boundaries. How? With mindfulness. By paying careful attention, and encouraging the student to pay careful attention to the apparently unimportant detail, paying heed to the spaces between and the spaces beyond the field of vision, as a continuous source of opportunity, of inspiration. I'm constantly reminding my students, when we do physical exercises, to pay attention less to the other bodies around them, and more to the spaces between the bodies, for it is in this space, in this air, that mind can be found.

Robert McNeer (USA), is an actor, director and writer who has lived for the last 20 years in Puglia, in southern Italy. He teaches theatre and communication techniques to educators, amateurs and professionals. He is co-founder of "La Luna nel Pozzo," a cultural center near Ostuni (Brindisi), where he creates theatre and hosts international workshops and seminars on many topics involving performing arts and human potential. "La Luna nel Pozzo" offers dormitory and eating facilities for 20 (more in nice weather), an ample dance studio and a stone amphitheatre.