When the cows interfere

My call center job--oops, I mean my call centre job--isn't as boring as you might think. All the calls are made at random, but it seems that every night there's one that makes the whole evening worthwhile. Once it was an interview with a 68-year-old woman who was celebrating her birthday. I offered to call her back another day so she wouldn't have to spend 20 minutes of her birthday answering questions about how well she likes her phone company, of all things, but she was in such a great mood that she insisted on continuing, even though her grandsons were sitting right there with her. And she was a delight.

Tonight it was a conversation with a 16-year-old farm boy from the north of England. He was really sweet and wanted so much to be helpful. I also think he doesn't get many calls. At one point we ask how many people live in the household of the person we're interviewing (15 people in the farm boy's, including "my closest cousin; his name is Jimmy"). At another we ask them the question, "How important it is to you that your phone company makes it easier to maintain relationships and build your network of friends?" And then we read out the choices: "Extremely important, Very important, Important, Not very important, or Not at all important." He simply replied, "I really don't have many." Which was innocent, sweet, and sad. A few other times were touching as well, like when he said he doesn't think he gets great service from his phone company "because I don't think they like me." We're not supposed to go too far off-script, but I tried to reassure him that I'm sure it wasn't personal. Generally he had a good sense of humor about everything. When he told me about not getting good customer service in a phone store he said, "I think they think I smell. But then again I do. I live on a farm, you know." (As if I could forget.)

Calls usually take about 15 minutes, 20 at the most. My conversation with him--broken in half when he had to go help his dad with the goats--took over 40. When I called him back on his mobile phone half an hour later to finish the interview, I asked if it was a good time and he said, "Sure, I'm just on the toilet, havin' a poo." This was the only interview I've done where a respondent's complaint about poor phone reception was due to "bein' out with the cows a lot, and I think they block the signal." There's also a time at the end of the interview when we're to ask if it would be OK for someone to re-contact them at some time in the future to ask more questions. Usually people say yes, occasionally no. His response was an enthusiastic "Fock, yeh!"

I wish I could call him again next week just to check in. I'm afraid he'll be disappointed if no one gets back in touch.

Mr. Nelson's neighborhood

The house I live in is two-and-a-half storeys, a rowhouse like so many in East London, sharing walls with its neighbors on either side. To the right as you face our house is a shut internet shop, then some florists. To the left, houses stretch endlessly, their chimneys and chimney pots punctuating the habitually low gray London sky. I have three housemates, actually four now that one’s girlfriend moved in a week ago.

The ground floor has a living room that’s used more as a bike garage and laundry-drying area, though if the house weren’t so damn cold we might use it as more of a lounge. There’s a nice little kitchen and a small eating area. Out through a sliding door is a small overgrown grassy yard or garden with a shed built into the back wall.

Up the stairs are three bedrooms and a bath. One room is quite large. The other two considerably smaller. Up another flight of stairs is the largest bedroom. My room has a good double bed in it and a wardrobe. And room for nothing else. If I lie crossways on my bed, I can touch opposite walls with tiptoes and head.

Have I mentioned how cold it is? (Robin: you are forewarned.) Many a night I’ve jumped under my duvet wearing a T-shirt, cotton pants, a sweatshirt, socks, and fingerless gloves like someone from a Dickens novel. The woolen prayer shawl that women in my church gave me when I left ministry doubles as a wrap under the duvet to keep my dreams toasty. I may add the practice of a hot bath before turning in. I’m certainly appreciating a good cup of hot tea when I have the leisure. (As I sit typing, cup of tea steaming within reach on the tabletop, in addition to what I put on this morning I wear a sweater, my shawl, and Bob Cratchit’s gloves. A hat may come next.)

Over the wall in the back garden is the East London Cemetery and Crematorium. (No, we don't see smoke rising ghoulishly from a smokestack. This isn’t Schindler’s List.) The cemetery entrance is a short walk from our front door. Just to your right when you enter the cemetery is the area where people’s ashes are apparently interred, very small stones in a close grid. Each has a well-pruned rosebush, a lovely touch. I’d never seen that before—and I’ve been in American cemeteries a fair amount. But that’s not the only difference here. Something about the rest of the cemetery has brought me to tears on two of my three visits. It’s somehow a very intimate place where the grief is made permanent, literally carved in stone.

The larger part of the East London Cemetery is jammed with monuments, many of them bearing a first name more prominently than the family name. Many bear doggerel verse of almost unbearable sentiment. A monument that caught my eye on my first stroll through the cemetery is dominated by a stone dartboard where you might expect to see a Celtic cross or an angel. Topping the stone, the name Billy in big letters. Carved into the polished stone below the dartboard:

BILLY GILL
TRAGICALLY TAKEN FROM US 5TH FEB 1990
AGED 24 YEARS

HAVE YOU EVER LOST A SON WHO WAS EVERYTHING TO YOU,
ONE YOU LOVED SO MUCH AND MISS HIM LIKE WE DO.
HAVE YOU EVER HAD THE HEARTACHE OR EVEN FELT THE PAIN.
WE PRAY YOU NEVER DO.
BECAUSE IF TEARS COULD BUILD A STAIRWAY
AND MEMORIES BUILD A LANE,
WE WOULD HAVE WALKED TO HEAVEN
TO BRING OUR SON BACK AGAIN.
LOVE YOU FOREVER, YOUR DEVOTED MUM & DAD
XXX XXX

And further toward the front of that same grave, upright on the horizontal marble slab, gilded letters carved into two panels forming a heart-shaped with a jagged break down the middle:

A THOUSAND WORDS
WON’T BRING YOU BACK.
WE KNOW BECAUSE WE HAVE TRIED.
NEITHER WILL A MILLION TEARS,
WE KNOW BECAUSE WE HAVE CRIED.
YOU LEFT BEHIND
MANY BROKEN HEARTS,
MANY MEMORIES TOO.
BUT WE NEVER
WANTED MEMORIES.
“BILLY, WE ONLY WANTED YOU.”
LOVE FROM YOUR
BROKEN HEARTED
MUM & DAD

I'm just here for a short time--maybe two years at most. I'll never be a true East Ender. But there's something sweet and sad here that touches me.

Lewis Carroll writes again

From a review in the Guardian of an Eddie Izzard stand-up comedy concert, 22 Nov 08 by Brian Logan:

"It's fabulously polymathic: not many comedy shows reference the battle of Thermopylae. Izzard credits Wikipedia, but the thanks should flow in the other direction. After all, Izzard was hotlinking between screeds of erudite waffle when Wikipedia was but a glint in the programmer’s eye.”

Setting aside that I don’t even know what polymathic means, “hotlinking between screed of erudite waffle”! Where else but in England do concert reviews read like “Jabberwocky”? If our columnists were so original, perhaps the American newspaper wouldn’t be following the dodo’s path. I do love the love of language here.

Catching up a bit

It's been over a week since I had time to blog. Days are long with school and work--and especially with travel within London, which eats up a sad amount of time and energy (1-1/2 hours on days when I just have classes, more than 4 hours on days that I also work. And all of this on top of 6 hours of class and 4 hours at my job, to say nothing of shopping, cooking, running errands, and standing in queues. So it's a task just managing the time. And then to find moments to reflect on what I'm experiencing here. And then to write about it... I wish for an extra day of doing nothing else each week.

But I don't wish I weren't doing what I'm doing.

I'll write in snapshots now, maybe to expand on them later.

The joy of Skype

Robin and I video-Skype almost every night. We each have a camera either built into or plugged into our computers, and we can talk (for free) and see each other at the same time. "Just like the Jetsons!" as Robin keeps saying. Actually, the most delightful part of the experience is seeing what a kick Robin gets out of it. Her smiling face each night, her sense of wonder at the whole thing. Isabel was back in town for the week (she flew to Minneapolis today), and each night before signing off, Robin would look at us through the computer screen say, "I'm cursoring you right now" (meaning she was drawing hearts around our faces on her computer screen). At times, without quite realizing what she was saying, she'd say, "I'm cursing you right now," but with the happiest and most loving expression on her face that the incongruity of it all was just hilarious.

The journey turns catastrophic

I wrote last week of "the fundamental journey," an exercise in Improvisation with the neutral mask in which we made our way through a variety of landscapes, riverscape, and seascape--either individually or in small groups. This week the journey was all what they call "off balance." Much of what we were tasked with doing early on, even before the fundamental journey, was to establish a world in balance. To convey through our bodies reacting to imagined things in the world on a blank stage, a world without conflict, in which things are as they should be. And to show through our actions and reactions that this is indeed how things are in this imagined world. Basically to show what normal is. (Or maybe what natural is--they keep drawing a distinction between the two.) In a sense, the fundamental journey takes place in a world in balance--not without striving or obstacles, but without the kind of situations we faced this week, when the sea as in a storm, the forest was on fire, the mountain was cracking in an earthquake, the river was a torrent, and the plains and desert were consumed in tornado and sandstorm. And to top it all off, at the end of the journey we were to look out not on a sunset, but on our hometown in flames. And to convey all of this without any props, without any language, without any facial expression because the mask shows nothing in the face--but everything in the way you move. And even though we all knew the task, a key part of the assignment was to reflect what you're seeing and the element you're moving through in the way your body moves--not so hard with the earthquake (in which I received as close to a compliment as I might expect from a teacher--"you're very close to something there'') and much harder when for example you're expressing a conflagration. Not only your reaction to it, bit also to show the movement of fire in the way you yourself move. If it sounds hokey, it isn't. If it sounds nigh onto impossible, well, that's the challenge.

Gems of wisdom

In the midst of all of this there are little gems that the teachers offer that resonate not only in the work we do here but in a larger sense. They probably won't translate well out of context here (c'mon folks, work with me on this), but here are a few, not from a conversation, by the way, but from different days and situations:

from Thomas: "Resistances: they can't be caressed away." Indicating the inadequacy both of denial and of a wan expression of effort when you're trying to communicate the enormity of an obstacle.

from Debra: "It begins before it begins." Which goes with what several teachers have reminded us, that you always enter from somewhere, from some previous event. You don't just stroll onto a stage, or into a situation in life without bringing your history and experience to it. I'm also noticing that I have a tendency to end a scene before it really ends, that sometime it really does take time simply to let your breath catch up to you and move through you before a scene or  situation is really over.

from Michael: (this is the one I most wanted to remember, bit of course it's the one for which I can't find my scribbled note): "Sometimes a detail is given to you and the rest just follows from that." He was talking about not overplanning our Improvs, about following an image that occurs to you on the spot and seeing to what unexpected place it takes you. That's really what inspiration is, in an artistic or a religious sense--a gift of insight or imagination, perhaps even a revelation that leads you to a moment you could not have contrived. Sometimes you see it in an enjoyable novel--the baseball or the armadillo in John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, for example. Or perhaps the famous madeleine in Proust (though I've never read him) or the food critic's taste of ratatouillie in the recent animated film of that name. What comes is a gift. What follows is a new creation, a surpassing of the predictable. I don't know enough to claim this with any authority, but my guess is that that's actually not far from the original meaning of genius, which must have something to do with generativity, and perhaps even with the word genie.

I wrote before about the lesson implied in some of our classes about the necessity of finding the desire beneath any action. This week, Thomas' teaching seemed to move beyond that again--no lesson is static here--to the necessity of finding within yourself the desire to connect with others, to communicate not just your own experience but shared experience. He was speaking (again) in terms of not even thinking about theatre yet, not even thinking about acting at this point (which chafes some of the goal-oriented actors in my class). What I think he was saying, though he's never this explicit, is if you don't have that sense of generosity and connection in you, why even bother. Find that first and, to paraphrase the gem recapped above, all the rest will follow--whether it's acting or writing or whatever. 

In my time in ministry, I often thought that that's really what preaching was at its best--an articulation of a shared experience, a shared search, a shared longing, joy, discovery, or lament. It wasn't telling people what they should believe or think. It was an honest expression of a shared experience, one person's way of articulating what others who were also on the journey might also be struggling to put into words.

Stiff man poster pop

I finally got internet access at home this week via this curious little memory-stick kind of a wireless thing that plugs into a USB port. So I should be able to post more conveniently now. My school and work schedules often combine to mean I'm away from home from 8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., though, so these posts may still be spotty from time to time.

Isabel passed through town this week from Portugal on her way to Berlin. She arrives again tomorrow for seven days before going home for several weeks. It's great to see her. She's beautiful and looks so happy. Tuesday she stopped by school at the end of my classes to see Thomas (the school founder) and several of the second-years. Some of my classmates also got to meet her, which some found confusing and others intriguing. After asking how old Isabel is, one of my classmates said I'm old enough to be her grandfather. (My classmate's, that is.) Not quite, I thought. I am by far the oldest in my class, though. The next-oldest student is 15-20 years younger. The youngest is 32 years younger than me. (The original title for my blog was "Old man plays the fool.") One of the early-20-somethings told me she wishes her dad would do something like this. I guess I can be the poster pop for the school's AARP recruiting, if they ever decide to do such a thing.

***

The tone of the teaching changed this week. Every day we have 75-90 minutes of Improv (I can never quite remember the schedule, but I don't really have to), and the teachers always give some feedback on what you might have done better. But starting this week they've been interrupting people from the very beginning. An example: Today when Amy (one of the five Movement and Improv teachers) asked for someone to "open the space" and go first, everybody hesitated, so I volunteered. We're working with the neutral mask--a plain brown stiff leather mask that covers your whole face, large holes for eyes, no particular expression in the eyes or mouth--and doing stages of what they call "the fundamental journey"--from the ocean, through a forest, up and down a mountain, across a river and a plain, and ending in the desert. Today we were working our way across or through the river. Generally we face away from the audience while we put on the mask, then turn around when we're ready and begin.

As soon as I turned around to start, Amy stopped me. "No," she said. "That's not it. Try again." Four times this happened. "Nope." "There's no energy there. Show us something." "Still not it." I never even got close to the water's edge, and it was time for someone else to try. (I did get a second chance later, which was much more satisfying.)

In the first two or three weeks we never got stopped like that. Now, in Week 4, it's happening to somebody every day.

Actually I don't mind it. It's all part of the teaching, and we all learn from it. Plus, I don't consider myself an actor, so it doesn't cut into me to be told I'm not doing well. Generally people take it fine, but I imagine it must be harder for some who do see themselves as actors and are a lot younger, more vulnerable in that way.

I also decided back on Tuesday in Thomas's class that I'm going to approach the improvs differently than I had been. It occurred to me that I wasn't drawing on my life experience, and that's what I have a wealth of, especially in comparison with many of my classmates. I'm 53, a father, have been married for longer than probably most of my classmates have been alive, have lived through the death of both my parents, was in ministry for almost 20 years. I have a lot to draw on. And so even if it's not exactly what the teachers are asking us to do, I decided to bring that experience into what I do, even if I'm the only one who knows I'm doing it. It's working pretty well--making the work more meaningful for me, anyway, and I do think I'm understanding what the teachers are getting at in a very different way than many of my classmates. Even if I'm a lot less talented--and a lot stiffer in the body--than so many others are.

The point the teachers are pushing, by the way, is that you have to have a reason for whatever you do. Or if reason is too intellectual, too heady, there has to be a why, an oomph, a desire beneath it. I can hear that many of my classmates aren't tuned into that yet. And I can see it, too. And yes, it was also what Amy was (not) seeing in my many non-starts today. This is hard, good, deep work. And a very bodily form of expression for it all. One of my subsequent posts should be called "It all comes from the hips." The pelvis, actually.

I feel like I've come a long way already. With an inexhaustible horizon of how far there is yet to go, of course, but still, this time has been productive already. The first week in our Acrobatics class--which is worth a blog entry in itself; maybe later ("It all lands on the neck (even though it's not supposed to)")--anyway, as I was saying, the first week in Acrobatics I was so distressed at how little I could do in comparison to others. There are some astounding athletes in my class. And while I'm fit for my age, so much of this whole experience is both physically and metaphorically about becoming more flexible and unlearning years of habits that have stiffened me. A classmate from India (who was also having difficulties in Acrobatics) helped me a lot that first Wednesday by saying, "It's not about getting it right. It's about seeing what your body can do." That perspective helped me get through the whole first week. Now, after some pretty severe plunges of the spirit during the first two weeks, I've been on a much more even keel for the past fortnight. (Gotta love some of these British words.)

So on I go. The stiff man is learning to bend. And to be resilient. And to ground himself. 

More later.

 

Brief Encounter

Went to a play yesterday at the urging of Ilan, one of our teachers. Not sure how often I can do this (even with the discount, it cost £20), but it was so highly recommended as a piece of physical theatre, which is what the school's about, that I splurged and went. i was glad I did.

The play was a staged version of “Brief Encounter,” played in a grand old movie theater on Haymarket Street near Trafalgar Square. Kneehigh Theatre was the company. A very talented ensemble. The production was very creative, incorporating projected scenes that looked like an old black-and-white film. Early on one character stepped through the screen from in front of it (the screen had vertical slits in it) and then appeared in the movie itself. The show included a lot of music, a bit of puppetry, a lot of movements by the actors to indicate things like a door opening and the cold wind blowing in, or how everything jumps and rattles in a café that sits right next to the tracks as a train rumbles by. Projected images of the ocean became a metaphor for passion and turmoil. And the pacing was so very tight. So well done.

When I met Thomas Prattki, the school founder at the Guthrie this summer, I remarked to him that i"d love to get some insight into how he watches a play. Maybe this is a first step toward that. There's so much to attend to in a production--so much more than I paid attention to before (like how the stage is or isn't balanced by the placement and movement of the actors, or the pacing and rhythm of the dialogue). The mind reels with all the elements that go together in those fleeting moments that build the whole experience.

I'm getting closer to being wiling to try to describe what we do at this school actually, but I don't want to get too bogged down in the details. Especially for someone like me, this isn't only a theatre school--though I am getting a better sense of how to watch a play. (Maybe it's a bit like how I thought, a while back, that the best way to learn how to be a lay member of a church is to serve one as clergy. But that's a longer story too.)

Sold my soul to the telemarketing devil

Well, it's not exactly telemarketing--marketing research, really. (Do you use a cell phone? Who is your carrier? How would you rate [insert name of carrier] in terms of not cutting you off in the middle of a call? Would you say they are Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, or Poor? ...) 

I've only worked a few 4-hour shifts, but the time goes fairly quickly, and thus far anyway, the British are generally more receptive to such calls than I would have expected. I for one hate getting such calls, especially at the dinner hour--guess when my shifts tend to be--but at least I'm not expected to hassle them or try to get them to buy anything. I really had to find a job, and this is the only one I could get so quickly. (An American accent seems to help here, too, kind of like how we like British accents in the States.) I figure I'll hold onto this job through December, at least. Unlike at some other jobs, they never even asked if I could work over Christmas. Maybe that's because their terminology for someone like me is "part-time casual  worker." Minimum wage here is something like £5.45 an hour (which is close to $9.50)--much closer to a living wage than at home. And this pays a bit more.

I've also finally gotten registered with the National Health Service and opened a bank account--on the fifth visit to the branch! You'd think banks would be leaping over each other to get people to deposit money in them these days. But they make it very hard to do business with them. At least twice I rushed to the bank right after class, waited in line for 45 minutes (the English stand in queues a lot), only to be told that there just wasn't time for me to open an account before they closed for the day. (Would it break the bank for them to staff both of their Meeting Point/information kiosks so the could handle twice as many people?) OK, maybe I'm being the impatient American, but really...