– a conversation between Kimbal Anderson Sensei and Dwayne Blackaller of Boise Contemporary Theater on April 30, 2012, moderated by Peter John Still -
PJS: So, I remember in particular one occasion when you were doing Suzuki exercises – we were working on Off the Record, (Lynn Allison’s play that just ran for four weeks,) and you managed to get two actors who’ve never been in the military to stand like soldiers: the senator who’s an ex marine and the policeman who’s ex-army. You were doing Suzuki exercises and I tried a couple of the things you were doing with them – I remember especially the squats, those slow squats – and I try a couple of exercises and immediately I am aware that this is activating exactly the same part(s) of the body and creating exactly the same kind of structure as the whole s e t of exercises that we’ve been learning at the dojo, and which Sensei teaches as the Body Majik workshop…
Dwayne Blackaller: Sure. Well. As you pointed out…you know… it really has its roots in a deep cultural place that I don’t pretend to know much about, b u t the reason I’m actually interested in Suzuki at all is because:
(1) I notice an immediate difference in stage presence between people who practise and people who don’t practise and,
(2) over and above simple physical presence, it has a l o t of very immediate practical results: so that, for example, my students that I work with now are 12 to 18 years old (and they’re a squirrelly bunch) and my fear was that they would be really resistant to doing this sort of work: because it’s hard, it’s sweaty and very militaristic – very precise – but the difference between before and after… we come into class and we do 10 or 20 minutes of Suzuki and then go on and the difference in concentration, the difference in bearing, the difference in creativity even is exponential, it’s really amazing. It’s very very practical.
And what’s odd about it is: they really like it. Because it’s not subjective it’s an objective “here’s-something-you’re-working-on” (and there’s a whole world of subjectivity inside it of course,) but it feels very practical; it feels very, um, “here’s-an-obstacle,” you know, “here’s-what-I’m-trying-to-do,” and “what-I’m-trying-to-achieve” and what you’re trying to achieve always seems just beyond your limit. And so you push toward that place and it’s just r e a l l y good practice and it gets people, you know, to understand what their center is in way that I have a hard time articulating in any other way. So it’s been good that way.
PJS: And when you say “physical presence” do you think that it’s really just “physical”?
Dwayne Blackaller: Oh no! I mean it’s clearly … It has to do with everything. It has to do with ki and with, um, someone who is activated, and activated in their center and free and clear in their bearing and, you know, graceful in their upper body and in their face. Those people are just automatically…
And what we do is: we talk about maintaining a fiction while we do this work, and really all that is is maintaining a relationship with whatever it is that you – - so your awareness is on something outside of yourself. You have a relation with it and it has a relationship to your center. So it’s your center in relation to all things and I feel that, of course, it’s not entirely just “physical”.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Well, of course, many things that have stayed in “training” - different kinds of “training” – arise from this really ancient…well, it’s a yogic kind of thing….
…but also there are some concepts in budo like the idea of ki and ma, and particularly sen, that have not been passed on widely to more modern kinds of “training”. And I don’t think anyone can actually begin to observe well until they’ve evolved this characteristic, traditional presence. First of all: a p r e s e n s e , who observes a circumstance, s e e s . The person who has an internalized sense of self sees a r e f l e c t i o n of themselves. So in traditional kinds of “training”, as you begin to get some idea that you are this awareness, this body, this body of awareness: you can begin to extend it, see its relationships, and particularly develop it.
I’ve always thought that it’s something that everyone may in some aspect possess, but rather like a muscle, it may not be developed. And I think it’s more like someone who has a really good palate, or a really good ear: first you have to hone the awareness of what you’re doing. First, just in the abstraction, you have to become a w a r e of your awareness. And so then, one proceeds to the real physicality of any one of the ways of s h a k i n g you out of the sleep that most people walk around in – whether it be through the kikentai idea of stomping the foot or whatever…
And there is a sense of the vertical…
Dwayne Blackaller: Yes!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …that you get into and, as you and I were playing the other day, the idea of like being so tall that you’re looking down into the whole thing – the whole thing – like you’re in the sky looking down… but not floating in the sky…
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
This is an amazing thing, this word that you use: “verticality”, because it’s come up a lot in my acting training. Because we do viewpoints work which is all about perception: it’s all about using your five senses to really understand the world and really just observe it, partially. But it’s very horizontal, and it lacks… what Anne Bogart talks about is a verticality. And so the Suzuki work fills that gap. It creates a sense of hierarchy in the midst of a “horizontal” sort of understanding. You can tip it on its side and say all things are equal but then build a sense of verticality within that, so that you can reach up and out and… It’s a physical manifestation that takes a certain kind of balance and effort that’s really interesting to me.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: I think you would find that the empowerment that the personality uses to act is a vertical element. Because the horizontal is always “in-connection-to”, it’s an “exchange-between,” it’s a “reflection-off-of,” whereas the vertical connects the universe. And then the person’s able to c h o o s e their position within that framework. And someone who really knows what they’re doing – and have done it a lot - its rather like playing scales - is not limited any.more in whom they perceive themselves to be: they don’t have to have a sense of “This is my good self, this is my not-so-good, this is when I’m on, and this is when I’m off,” but rather: all these places, possibilities exist and I’m able to access them. And like I say, I think that shaking aspect – or exercise – is pretty common it’s like, simply, s h a k i n g the body out of an habitual state of anxiety or dullness or whatever, and then activating your hara by like [CLAPS] single-effort [CLAPS AGAIN] - single-effort a thousand times.
Dwayne Blackaller: Right! I love that. And I love your reference to the scales too, because I feel like: that’s an element that in contemporary American acting in particular is absolutely absent: the idea of repetitive training that strengthens the will, that allows you to – as you said – access this verticality. It’s really….
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: One thing I think too: if you’ve been around people who have a great presence - and there’s different kinds: stage presence… I think about evangelists, even… even t h e y have a sense of vertical awareness (and particularly the ones that, I guess I’d say, are really hooked up to what they’re believing,) too, right? And sometimes what they c a l l “charisma” is really: understanding the movement of ki, and the ability to embrace and include the audience in the experience.
One of the things I noticed, particularly so in sword is that it is not a contest of “clash,” it’s the control of empty space. I think I was training some guys who were going to do some applied… [some stage combat], and we were talking about that: that the space between them, the actors, was really important. And it’s not simply the marks on the floor, it’s really the space they’re creating between each other so the the audience can see that people are connecting an intimate way: “those people are suspicious.” Even if the distance, the 10 feet or the 4 feet is no different. But the space that they control….
That’s the idea, too, of initiative: being able to understand initiative - sen and whatever.
And I see actors who probably were precocious children who were able to manipulate their parents well, understand very subtle body language and cues and all that, and also interrupting timing: catching someone in mid-thought and asking for the the cookie then or whatever… and they become actors. But they don’t necessarily… It’s a little like they have a slyness of a fox, but they don’t really have this understanding of space and time, and so they kind of stop. They go to a certain place and stop. And then they run into Anthony Hopkins or someone, who’s got the juice, who begins to say: “no, this is an artform that requires repetitive action that can seem quite boring, but you cannot be bored.” A swordsman can’t be bored. That’s the beauty. At least, in budo the demand for your attention is reinforced instantly. If you fade and the other person’s aware, you are struck.
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Which is why we were taught to thank the person for hitting you. And then learnt to r e a l l y thank them, because you realize that they are bringing about “the change”. And in theatre, one of the things I like watching is when people catch their own little flicker, and decide not to do it again. And then they start looking at “how-does-that-work?” and the creativity comes… and if you see a pair of people working with that it’s pretty amazing to watch.
Dwayne Blackaller: Right! There’s an actor that I work with named Arthur Glen Hughes who has that same sort of sensibility. He watches for vulnerability. He watches when you disappear and [SNAPS FINGERS] something changes in the room and you really are held to the fire as far as being present, and it’s the same thing.
This is what I love about the Suzuki training: that we can have 15 people in the room all doing the same exercise, and you can watch any one of them individually flicker or fade and everyone in the audience sees it - it’s a clear defining moment - and you get the opportunity – and are beholden to that person – to call them out on it. And that sense of “Oh damn it, I did disappear,” that awareness, is really great because you can for the first time - for a lot of these actors - pay attention to whether they are actually physically present and connected, or whether they have, as you said, flickered and disappeared for a moment…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: And also, I think, it is particularly true in high levels of budo that the elimination of flicker can give rise to a whole different kind of understanding. Because now your movie isn’t having gaps in it. You can s e e others flicker, of course. And when I watch people studying to be better performers, the ones that who are simply speaking their lines and are quite in love with themselves are stuck in a giant flicker. No matter how much technique, and all that, they have, there’s not an understanding of presence. The presence is their own self-love, not love of what they’re doing.
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Right?
Dwayne Blackaller: That’s interesting…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: And the ones I think who so naturally seize your mind - they draw you in – don’t flicker.
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: U n l e s s they intend to let you go. And I’ve seen that, and there’s a skilful way to let it go, to call an end, without crescendo: an emptiness.
PJS: And what’s the part - in learning not to flicker - what’s the part of makoto? In the theater we talk about “honesty,” “honest acting,” which is exactly a translation of “makoto”…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: For me, talking from personal experience rather than philosophical… wonder or whatever… I think when you stop doing things that are of no use – when you just decide you’re not going to do things which are of no use – it’s natural to start to develop this honesty. There’s, uh, nothing extra. You don’t need to add. And so… you know…
PJS: This is a place we get to regularly in regional theatre: when we’re in technical rehearsals and everyone’s short of sleep - and the folks backstage, out front, and onstage… No-one has time to do anything except try to make the show good…
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
PJS: …and that’s the difference…
Dwayne Blackaller: Yes, that is the difference. I think that what for me’s exciting about this is that… uh…. so… in viewpoints we talk about the importance of reading more than writing, in the sense that: a lot of actors get up there, and they’re in a physical, improvisational world, when we do viewpoints work. And the temptation, of course, is to do stuff all the time, and to read the world very quickly, in order to do something in it, or to contribute in some way; and it turns into this very schmacty – you know – busy and unrealized sort of work. And it feels very hollow, and we recognise it as nonsense. Until, of course, what’s beautiful is when they start in on really reading the world, and reading the situation.
A very simple exercise, that a lot of the young students here do, is that we ask them to really listen for something in the room, or listen to something in the space, and instantly they become watchable in a way that they weren’t, moments ago. And so the practice of just reading the situation begets its own sort of “dynamic tension”, which is the phrase that I’m a little bit in love with, right now: this notion of “sending down into the earth and pulling up simultaneously” - being able to push and pull simultaneously – so that you’re finding that friction point…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: That’s aiki - aiki-inyo - push and pull simultaneously…
Dwayne Blackaller: So it’s great, but it requires – - as you have just pointed out – it requires this dedication to actually listening, and not imposing your expectation, or what you suspect the situation should be… reading the situation as it actually is: that’s interesting.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: And then I think about the physical exercise of just going up and down which basically is entering into what we call shiai, as in a kendo match or some such other art. That’s when you’re going down, then leaping up and striking. It also develops in us a certain kind of leg strength and balance but – most of all - you m u s t become v e r t i c a l . If you lean, you block with your face - [SMILES] this quite un-natural movement - and you’re also, as you said, you’re poised to do something just to get it done, because you’re not [in a position] where you can just hold yourself, like a drop of water on a leaf. And when I see people who do well at any of this, they have at least discovered what it’s like to have the mind be stable, and when you can set it down like a rock. You’re not trying to h o l d the mind stable: the gravitas of a rock holds itself down.
[....]
And I think that…. I find… it’s usually only a basic kind of training that people do. They say that there are three stages of training. I’m not sure exactly how far people usually get with the Suzuki acting variety – (1) because it’s quite strenuous, and (2) in order I think to progress physically you’d have to do it daily…
Dwayne Blackaller: Exactly!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …and you need a teacher to reinforce what’s straight up and down and what is not, and someone to keep you honest about sound quality. So, for instance, when you do ken – sword training – you do it daily, and the whole thing’s a thousand cuts and all these other things, but as part of it you’re going up and down… and instead of speaking Shakespeare, as you go up and down, often you’re counting in archaic Japanese… but you’re learning how to …have a continuous stream of energy: to husband that energy, initially, and then to locate energy beyond yourself and be in that flow, and then to have the energy itself move instead of self-concerned or self-conscious movement.
But there is that thing that you must r e f i n e the body to be able to hold the posture.
Dwayne Blackaller: That’s beautiful. I’ve never heard it articulated that way, but it’s clearly visible… only visible in people who do daily work, who do work very consistently. And that’s something I find that we really need to invest in as far as contemporary acting culture: that is, a sense that… well, there’s this sort of realization when you go to see a ballet and watch the ballet dancer: everyone in the audience says “she’s amazing!” and “boy, what she must have sacrificed!” and “the work she’s put into this to get where she is!” Same thing when you go to the symphony: you look at the ‘cellist and you think, “my God how much work that requires and how much dedication,” and then you see a play and you think, “Oh, my cousin’s in a play!” And the expectation is, at least culturally, that there is not an equivalent to scales and to physical improvement that is extra-ordinary…
PJS: …and class every morning…
Dwayne Blackaller: Yeah, exactly, …and class every morning… and I feel like that’s something that when actors get a sense of it… you know it really you can take someone who, as you say, has a sensibility about performing, has a natural gift or charisma or whatever it happens to be, but without this sort of work even they.end up hitting that wall that we’ve all recognised – that I’ve felt that myself, too – and realized that with training you can actually…there is hope to really make a difference. And I’ve seen students who initially seemed rather uninteresting but with this sort of repetitive physical – as you say v e r y physical – work it busts things wide open. It’s great.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: One of the things I think about body energy and this kind of thing: I see people who are talking heads, and they don’t have the physical presence, so in essence they don’t perform the action with their whole body. So that there’s this almost cartoonish effect. And then you can see when someone who’s quite good at that – and they have to back off: and their body isn’t saying the same thing as their head and mouth. And generally it’s broken across the diaphragm – it’s called the belt meridian. But then with this stomping and all the different things and shaking they shake the body to break this barrier between the two halves so that, once they settle into the ground, the whole body must act. And I don’t know any other way to get there… in general almost every human being, their energy goes up and down, and you have a good night night and a bad night, and you eat the wrong food… but to be able to just know that with enough repetition of these movements: I will begin to remember… and the body, being a perfect animal for that, likes it, too…
Dwayne Blackaller: Right! That’s, I think, the most exciting thing: to realize that there’s a hunger that gets developed when you start realizing the potential of the work.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: I would love to get some people in the acting world, as a group – because I generally work with two or three - and see what the dynamic is when we, uh, give them a little more context for it…
Dwayne Blackaller: Yeah…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …right? You have a system that… because a lot of Japanese things were attempted a lot like Kano Sensei [editor: founder of Judo] and things, where they looked at budo and asked, “How do we do this in a university? How do we take this incredible Way…” - because it’s a “Way”: if you can master one “Way”, you can understand…
both: …all “Ways” -
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …all “Ways”, okay, - “…and define that, and that… “ And then they tried to westernize it. So, in essence, they were building a bridge between their living culture and this Western power, who were armed to the teeth, and who also had things that they wanted, to try to communicate… I’m not saying that there’s no tradition for this in the West, I’m just saying: what was created was a whole bunch of systems that are somewhat collegiate in a way… the systems are such that the curriculum does: “This, this, and this…” whereas in a dojo the curriculum was ancient and still has “this, this, and this…” but often was determined by the teacher’s observation of you. You know: “You! Go carry some water!” Right? “You! Cut a thousand times!…”
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Right. …”When you’ve carried enough water that your feet are on the ground…”
Dwayne Blackaller: ye-uh…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …so…
Dwayne Blackaller: It’s an accurate description that you make of Tadashi Suzuki’s method, because, of course, his theatre company in Toga does a lot of Western work, including a lot of Chekhov and a lot of Shakespeare and so it is a very interesting East-meets-West sort of… um… there’s a tension there that’s interesting. And you can feel that reach in the work that he’s doing, but it is, as I’ve watched people who train, m o d e r a t e l y helpful if you follow the expected line (for example: you go to a class and learn it one way, and then teach that way from then on out)… it’s moderately helpful and there’s some things that are good that come out of it and a lot of bad things that come out of it… but it’s always most exciting and most helpful when you’re in the dynamic situation. People that I’ve trained with recently found that, as you say, having a roomful of people where you can articulate for each individual person where they are in this work, and be able to find some flexibility and fluidity,… That’s what I think is what’s really promising about this budo - these ancient ideas of budo, I think – combining with some of the Suzuki work…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Yeah!… and for sure you know that that’s the root… and, basically, I’ve watched enough of it to say, “well, that’s this,” and, “that was about this,” at least in the context of a sword – and, “that’s also about this,” in the context of a flower: because they’re identical. The same comprehension of the natural order of things exists in all Ways and it’s kind of interesting. I remember I watched some pretty evolved Japanese production where the set designer understood this and everyone came to it with some chunk, some Way, and they all understood that it was “one Way,” which really made a different solidity: it was almost like it was so real it was unreal. It was so present and real, kind of like Japanese architecture and such, which can be perfect, sometimes, and then: it’s nature. It’s a very unusual kind of deal. It’s not Disneyesque which… I don’t know if you’ve walked around Disneyland, but it’s like the whole place is a giant architectural drawing: you could actually see each tree is trimmed to fit! This is crazy! Whereas a Japanese architect would understand treeness and stickness and whatever; it would just look random and then you’re, “Huh! the shadows are exactly the kanji for water…”
Dwayne Blackaller: That’s amazing. Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: And so I think: that is one of the things that also gets cultivated in deeper study: people begin to have this perceptual grace – but it’s a perceptual perfectionism. There’s a sense of, “how does this remain absolutely natural but full value?” Everything’s there, so you don’t… You can have a happy accident, but where it goes is quite profound. Right ?
Dwayne Blackaller: That’s great. It’s a beautiful thought. And I love the idea that the understanding of treeness or stickness – as you were saying - matches up with so many different Western philosophies that affect how we approach acting, and character development and all that sort of thing: the embodiment of things, and the understanding of “the ideal,” and the struggle to - as you say - find reality in the moment… Or the way in which the Stanislavsky notion of creating the illusion of truth on stage has been replaced, for a lot us I think, with trying to find, “well, what is the a c t u a l truth on stage?” you know, “what’s actually happening right now?” And we all feel it when it’s not present, and, sadly, my feeling is that a lot of times it’s n o t present and so we have negative experiences in the theater, or our expectation of the theater has diminished to the point where we’re happy if we’re entertained and if there is movement and dialogue and if there’s some sort of satisfying expectation that’s met.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Something that I find that – - – I totally get that – - – - with what I’ve watched, particularly, you know, not to name names, but locally: that a standing ovation was at one time something profoundly meaningful. Like: “wow!” …that was like:. instead of no-one applauding at all because they were so enraptured they could not move, someone would have to stand up and break the bubble, to connect to this next stage, to go to the next step. Now it’s just, uh, “we were entertained - a lot.” Or maybe someone just starts it and no-one knows what else to do (there’s an embarrassment at not doing it)… so it doesn’t really allow the company to receive much. They don’t get that opportunity to realize that whatever that was, that was a cosmic kind of performance. The universe just performed itself and everyone was caught up.
Dwayne Blackaller: Right! Well, and it’s true that we’ve all had that experience of watching the chain-reaction standing ovation, where the audience slowly stands up, and the feeling in the room is: “thank you, that was fun…” but it’s different than, for example, calling back to a time when I came back to see a show at Boise Contemporary Theater early on in our work in this building: The Cripple of Inishmaan. And there’s a moment just before the intermission when a character named Babby Bobby – who’s this character with a heart of gold whom we’ve come to love and trust - has been betrayed. And he has a moment where this lead pipe slips out of his sleeve and he – in the darkness – viciously beats our main character. The audience reaction was so visceral and immediate that it converted my brother from a guy who’s not a theater guy to a theater person, in a moment! And those reactions were not given with foresight or for any reason other than something happened in the room that literally shook the room and changed the room in a physical way. So that’s what I find so intriguing about this understanding: this idea of paying attention to the physical, and then being able to make choices that have ramifications in the physical world, real actual consequences.
And we actors, I think, really need to pay better attention to what’s happening not only in our own bodies - though that’s the first place where a lot of it’s missing: recognizing when your breath is hitching, and recognizing when your chi is high instead of down in your center, or when your shoulders are rising, or all those small things that make such a huge difference: that’s the first step that we miss - but then, it seems, extending your awareness to the physical reality of your fellow performers and the people in the audience all simultaneously. Because that’s the sublime moment that we reach, when you realize that everyone breathed the same breath in that moment, that everyone exhaled at the same moment…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Kokyu.
Dwayne Blackaller: Kokyu. That’s great. And this is what is so entrancing, in the moment, isn’t it: when you realize you hit the sweet spot, you realize that there’s a physical reaction in the room that’s undeniable, and it’s not given with any sort of foresight or intention: it exists out of a result of things in the room. But it seems to me that you can get closer and closer to that by paying attention to the physical and by this sort of physical work.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Yes. That sort of thing is like: in budo a person with a very strong sense of sen, a strong hara, is like a force of nature. Things become entrained to them. So you pick up… their old stick in the garden or something, and it’s like calligraphy - it is so strong, it’s so potent, that vibration, that your own body starts to synch up with it. . And that whole idea – I’ve often tried to explain this in Western physics to people, Western physiology - not because I think it’s the best explanation, but because it’s definitely the language that they have some, what, faith in – it’s like when you spook a flight of birds: at first it’s like chaos and then they are all turning at the same time… Well, they’re not watching each other. They are one bird. They become “birdness”….by entrainment. Right? And I think the exact same principle exists in human populations, too. A theater is like a flock of birds. And understanding this kind of deep connectivity, a company of actors can entrain the audience to the space.
But you can’t give what you don’t have. If you’re not there they go where you are. It’s honest: they go where you are. If you have trepidation, they… well, of course, there’s one thing: where you project trepidation and they go there. But there’s the other thing where you’re just not ready. That also gets conveyed. And I think that there are a lot of exercises… I’d be really interested, sometime, just watching what you do…
Dwayne Blackaller: Sure, yeah!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …the form of it, the kata, and then seeing if I can find its corollary, its origins, or maybe how one school of thought took it along the road, and see how they would be with that.
Dwayne Blackaller: That would be brilliant!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: In order to get them centered, and take them to a place, and then say, “Okay, how about this?”
The sword of the mind or the heart is the inter-reaction between two – or maybe ten – players. And in budo practice, once you understand that, the possibilities are almost infinite. Things can happen. And also that, “The universe itself, the heart of the universe itself, can express i n s t a n t l y . ” And if a person’s entrained to that concept, they are okay with being that.
It’s like a sacred activity. Sacred acting. I think about Greek plays and such: there’s a real sacred concept. And I think that plays, over time… I think, you know, there’s a reason that there’s still Shakespeare. There’s a reason that certain things persist. And there’s also reasons that people write about so much stuff that is… I want to say…. it’s cultural reinforcement: where we’re all recognizing this cultural thing. With a lot of playwrights it’s like that, but there’s also a substrate of recognizing a humanity – and also a cosmic humanity - the stuff that’s underneath, expressing itself, and I think: that’s what gets people.
Dwayne Blackaller: Well it’s true. And it seems to me that that’s the way we achieve more than the-sum-of-its-parts in the work we do.
When I work with students, young children especially, as they create and write there is first - my first experience was - that they create things that have very similar thematic elements time after time. And I thought, “well, this is odd,” and, “it must be culturally infused. They’re going after these sort of cultural stories…” But what is great is that they can actually be pushing against a lot of that cultural stuff and come to some deeper Shakespearean, Greek element.
This story that we’re creating right now [in April-May of 2012], for example, has some very interesting abstract things to it: it’s about a character whose name is “Left,” because he’s not right, and he’s an undertaker, this boy who sees. Every time someone’s about to die, he hears this buzzing sound and sees the figure of a bee-keeper, and he becomes convinced that this bee-keeper is the harbinger of some kind of… And no-one else witnesses this bee-keeper, but it’s a really interesting notion. And it’s about a hammer factory in this village that’s feeling the tension between industrialization and their old ways. And…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: A hammer factory - what an idea…
Dwayne Blackaller: Isn’t it great? Wonderful image!… …and of course it involves this traveler who comes into town, who begins to divide the town. And then once he recognizes that he’s the one who has instigated this entire thing, he sacrifices himself to renew the town. And it’s a remarkable story that comes entirely out of image-banks that they do - we do this physical work, then we write images and collect images, and then we really pay attention to the ones that kick at our ribs, or the ones that have some sort of physical effect on us, and we just mark those. And inevitably they lead to a story like this, where there are these very Greek sort of, epic notions, and so… But I find that it’s much easier to access those things when you are sweating, and when you have pushed yourself to a place where you have exceeded your physical expectation, and the mind is clear, and you’re no longer trying to be clever because you’re tired, and you’re dealing with the reality of what’s in the room. It’s much easier to get to that place then than it is when you sit down, for instance, having come in from looking up things on You Tube. Ye-uh, it’s much harder to hit that place.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: I think that it would be fun to come when you’re going to do it, and just watch and see what might…. I’m sure that it would have it’s own suggestion….
Dwayne Blackaller: I’d love to have you come in the next couple of weeks.
[....]
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: I’d love to see what we could come up with.
There’s no reason that… I mean, this is a Western thing I find that is so silly. Because it’s one of those things that, if you just think about it with common sense, you wouldn’t do it. But people come up with a system, and they travel around teaching it, and there’s a tendency to codify it. And then an outside observer, not deeply understanding what you’re doing, thinks that the kata is the art. And then that gets passed to the next generation, who put their personality into it - and maybe it’s more entertaining, it seems somewhat different, and they play with it for a bit – but they don’t understand the underlying concept, yet. And so then often people start trade-marking, certifying, and codifying. And that becomes it. And so it loses that thing that I was saying, where you say to the one student, “There’s the bucket.” “Here’s the stone.” And: “Here’s the sword”…
Dwayne Blackaller: That’s great. I love that idea, and I would love to have you come in and, sort of, deepen our understanding of some of the roots of some of these things…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Plus it would be fun…
Dwayne Blackaller: Yuh, it would be a blast!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: It would be a blast. Yeah.
PJS: I’d just like to say: my experience in the dojo has been that, over a few years, you can learn to get to that place that Dwayne was talking about, if you’re lucky, instantaneously. With one gesture of the hand….
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: That’s another thing: do you employ mudra?
Dwayne Blackaller: We haven’t. Peter’s been giving me some, so I’ve been doing some work….
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: One thing that I find quite interesting - I’ve observed this in performers – there are certain people who learn to dance, or whatever, and they’re observing the teacher across… like I’m looking at you. And there’s another group of people who stand and look at a mirror, with the teacher, and they seem to develop a completely…. two different things go on there. And if you switch the roles, some of them will become completely uncomfortable: some of them will only use the mirrors, and now they’re going to have to observe… And I’ve kind of played with that. And I started having the thought that gestures, these naturally arising hand gestures that humans do, if you switched it and began to talk… say you’re right handed: switch to your left hand, …talk with your left hand, even if you have to sit on your right hand, whatever it takes… it activates a different aspect of you so profoundly…
Dwayne Blackaller: Yeah…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …and after a while it becomes comfortable…
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …and it doubles the possibility of the way you… emotions change.
What I’ve noticed is: your emotions have a different quality. They attenuate differently, they last different periods, it really changes things. Because it’s not a conditioned, reinforcing thing…
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …so if you apply this to a stage laugh – for example - people who have a “stage laugh,” it can be irritating. Because it doesn’t engage, and it’s a simulation, and even if it’s an excellent simulation it’s still not it.
Dwayne Blackaller: I know that exactly!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: And what I noticed, working through my left side, my laugh changed, but it was always genuine. Because there was no predisposition about “laugh!”
Which I think would be an interesting exercise…
Dwayne Blackaller: That’s a great exercise. I love the idea of mirrors and no mirrors, too. In grad school – - – it was funny – - - you could divide up the class by those who learned in mirrors and those who didn’t. And, uh, watching what shifts when you remove those: that’s a really great thought. And the idea of switching handedness and pushing people into physicality that they’re not used to is really great…
PJS: It’s probably worth saying that at the dojo we’re being taught – and the tradition is aware of (when you talk about “center” or “the core”) – which muscle groups that comprises and which muscle is the most important. It’s very detailed, specific work.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: You can’t become vertical, initially - at the first level of training – without the physicality of the psoas muscle, and all these things, working correctly. Now as you get the concept of “vertical”, you no longer need the muscles - you can be laying on your back and still have verticality – but you’ve got to get there through stages.
Dwayne Blackaller: That’s really interesting. I would love to watch how they match up and where things cross. Um… Marcel Marceau, who was a teacher of my teacher, talked a lot about…um…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: He also did aiki.
Dwayne Blackaller: Did he really?
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Yeah. He did tai-chi and he did aikido. He evidently met, maybe, Tohei Sensei because - what is it - there used to be more aikido dojos in France than in Japan…
Dwayne Blackaller: That’s amazing. Well, you know, I find that so interesting because my movement teacher was one of his protegés, and she would talk about: everything that Marcel Marceau did started with (he called it) “sipping through the straw” into the perineum: so you’re sipping up as you go down… and that when you go up, you’re going down to go up, and up to go down: all that exquisite tension stuff that I love: that dynamic tension.
So when my students work, it’s amazing, because I used to really work on diaphragm and breath, for projection, and now that comes much more infrequently. Most of the time what I talk about is: pulling into your perineum while you speak. And that [CLICKS FINGERS] instantly makes them taller, and their voice resonates in such a way that they don’t have to shout yet they fill the space.
So I find that that’s an interesting possible connection here.
But, yeah, I would love to have you come, give us give us an understanding and an outside perspective that sort of shifts our understanding of why we do what we do…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: It could be fun.
Dwayne Blackaller: Yuh.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Co-creating things is the nature of all this…
Dwayne Blackaller: Yuh! It’s great. Well, we need to get some of these kids coming down to the dojo, too. There are a couple of students that you would love!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: I think its… well…one thing that I can say good about budo-training, just in a practical sense, is balance.
Dwayne Blackaller: Hmmm…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: They won’t fall down so easily – - – and if they need to fall down …
Dwayne Blackaller: Right.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …they do it in a way that’s safe.
And also the sense that falling, even if it’s a mental state of falling, is not bad. To not create an idea about failure.
Dwayne Blackaller: Yuh.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …you know…
Dwayne Blackaller: That’s great!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Disconnect it from everything other than: “I had an idea and it didn’t happen.”
Dwayne Blackaller: Right. That’s great! I love this. I’d love to hear you talk more about failure…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Invest in failure!
Dwayne Blackaller: Yeah!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: I was taught – someone told me - “invest in loss.” I thought, “Wow! Yeah!”
Dwayne Blackaller: Yeah!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Yeah! And that’s the thing: when you see someone who’s lived long enough to have “life experience” – if they’re an actor, they probably have had real life occurences of many of the things they’re trying to portray – so they bring… they bring reality to it.
Dwayne Blackaller: Well, and it’s I think it’s something that, especially young people, struggle with. And a lot of them, when first exposed to a technique like Suzuki, or something, or even martial arts… there’s a lot of built in failure. And they experience it daily in their repetition, and get to a point where it can be… You watch people – in the middle of that bell curve of people who get pushed to their limit – and feel like, “My God, I cannot succeed in this!” And then you watch the people who are really successful, and it’s not that they’re achieving any sort of perfection: it’s how they deal with the failure of that moment…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …the inevitable constant failures…
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …that occur in the midst of the up and the down….
Dwayne Blackaller: Right! And it’s amazing to watch people… to push people into…watch them go to a place where they start to recognize that, as you alluded to… what I love most in watching Suzuki struggle is that there is the moment where someone’s knees – or the thighs – begin to shake. And their knees are trembling or their core, if we’re doing sitting work, begins to really shake. And the only time that is uninteresting, the only time that that spell is broken between audience and the performers, is when they bail on it, or there’s a moment where they fall out or they sort of chastise themselves (non-verbally), or they break that fiction that they’ve created and nurse the wound, whatever it happens to be. But when you watch them struggle through while maintaining, as best they can, that failure – what seems to be a failure – instantly transcends and becomes something different, and becomes not only an incredible teachable place but also it just seems like it’s exactly right!
That’s the best kind of character development that we can do, because, generally – as I was talking to my students – characters generally don’t get what they want. But while we watch them, they struggle desperately for the thing that they – we – almost are certain they won’t achieve. And being able to practise that daily is a great reinforcement of being able to know that, even if you’re playing Captain Hook, and you’ve read the end, you know that you are able to play in some sort of way that allows you to fully, physically, attempt something real – instead of bowing to an inevitable preconception - and allows you to be present in the moment, where something is actually - as you say, and I love the phrase - shaking it out, allows you to get to a place where you literally have a physical experience that puts you…. um… the way someone described it to me, once, was that Suzuki training was about creating a crisis physically, and then being able to maintain grace and poise in the midst of crisis.
So that it’s an active sort of thing.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: That kind of brings up some of the art terms that arise from that understanding, like… wabi and sabi, all these different kinds of…
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …concepts. Because in order to have refined poverty…
Dwayne Blackaller: Yeah!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …one has to fail…
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …and then still, even in this failed state, have grace.
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Which I think is pretty interesting.
Dwayne Blackaller: That’s beautiful, I love that… I’ll have to think about that…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Yeah! So I… I was thinking about some of the concepts in training – - - you know, the kangeiko idea of severe training, where you go in and you train from dawn to midnight without stopping, super-hard, really, truly like Tesshu and those guys would talk about. And we used to do that when we’d go to gasshuku with Barrish Sensei. He’d be like seven, eight hours so at the end you’re falling down. And I’ve gone to Granby, Colorado – I think it’s at probably eight or nine thousand feet - and it’s a series of teachers, and if you wish to learn from them then you do: t h i s for two hours and then t h i s for two hours… and they’re rotating and you’re not…
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …and you have to figure out who you’re willing to not train with and that’s: none!
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Right? So by the end of the day, you’re s h a k i n g . Your legs are just trembling. Because you’ve been down and up, thrown, and, you know, whatever it might be, hundreds and hundreds of times…
Dwayne Blackaller: Wow!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …and just hanging onto it because this is your chance…
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …this is the one chance…
Dwayne Blackaller: Yuh!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: And you end up lying down and not really sleeping, because you’re so far beyond that. And you go to sleep. And the next morning you wake up, and you’ve got three days of this…
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: And we’ve both got “aiki-polio” where the tops of your legs feel like someone beat them. And they’re stiff. And the only way to go back to training is to go up and down again, and do that same stuff: [that we're talking about:] stomp your feet, wake everything back up, and then: move your mind from the limitation that you think you have, to opportunity!
Dwayne Blackaller: That is…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Yes.
Dwayne Blackaller: …amazing! It parallels exactly the training… now ours wasn’t, uh…. I mean, we did work from dawn to midnight but, um, the Suzuki portion….we would do, you know, two hours of Suzuki, two hours of viewpoints, followed by more Suzuki, and then devising – where we put these things into practice - theoretically – and, uh, but yeah, I was… uh… I loved it.
We had a month in Saratoga and it was the same thing: it’s the experience of - at the end of a day – walking to the dorm rooms where we were staying…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: [CHUCKLES]
Dwayne Blackaller: …yeah…. we’d get to stairs and it would be…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: [LAUGHS]
Dwayne Blackaller: …up a j o u r n e y !
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Yes!
Dwayne Blackaller: Right! But miraculously, people don’t leave.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: No.
Dwayne Blackaller: No! It’s… people come in, and what was… (there was a surprising amount of diversity…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Yes….
Dwayne Blackaller: …too. There were people who were fifty and sixty years old, and people who were eighteen years old) …and you could watch…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: [CHUCKLES]
Dwayne Blackaller: …yeah… people could all…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Yeah! Ittai !
Dwayne Blackaller: Yeah! …You get there! But this notion of going past your physical expectation, repeatedly, it does remarkable things, because it makes you realize that all these barriers that you perceive are almost all perceptual, barriers that we don’t…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Hmmm, o-
Dwayne Blackaller: …ever… you know…. that they’re all fictional.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: -kay!
Dwayne Blackaller: The, um….
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: The…
Dwayne Blackaller: …the one little…. no, I’m sorry… go ahead!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …well … one thing I was thinking too: there is an elation to it….
Dwayne Blackaller: Yes! Oh, absolutely!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …and that’s that sort of – - – uh – - – hm – - - I think: “that’s Budo.”
It’s like entering under the cut of the sword. You have to be in an elated state. Too cautious? No good.
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: But too reckless? No good! There has to be – kind of – a joy in going in to possibilities, right?
Dwayne Blackaller: That’s beautiful.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Even though it hurts. You know it hurts and you can’t shut down the hurt - you shut down the hurt, you’re not awake any more.
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: You’re stumbling around so…
Dwayne Blackaller: Right! And you watch people succumb to that….yeah…that’s funny, because if someone succumbs to the…negative - or to that place of “I’m just gonna…” They called it the angry face: when people would be doing Suzuki, and you’d watch their face and the tension in their jaw, and all of a sudden they’re incapable of actually performing. They’re doing the actions…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Yes….
Dwayne Blackaller: …but you watch and it’s not that. They’re not actually present, and the work is unfulfilling. And you watch someone who gets that hint of a smile on their face, or that sort of connection in their eyes, that sparkle that says that they’re there…
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Uh huh…
Dwayne Blackaller: …in the midst of sweat and shaking and all of a sudden it is transcendent, the room gets hushed, and expectant… It’s very cool.
PJS: What was it O’Sensei said? “Always practise in a vibrant and joyful manner?”
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Yes! yeah.
Dwayne Blackaller: [LAUGHS] Yeah! It’s good.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: And I think that, often, what’s lacking in Western, collegiate, systems (systems with that framework of “we’ve got it all worked out “) - is elation.
Dwayne Blackaller: Yuh!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: There can certainly be acquisition, and experience, and cameraderie, and things can develop, but it’s rare to have elation. Unless the teacher’s pretty brilliant…
Dwayne Blackaller: Right!
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: …about keeping the push….
Dwayne Blackaller: Yeah! That’s such a beautiful thing.
