Artfully Mindful

The Fluid Self

• D. R. Thompson • Season 2 • Episode 40

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What if the "self" you think you know is just another part you're playing? Join us for a thought-provoking conversation with Don, who draws from his rich theater background to challenge the notion of a fixed personal identity. Through the lens of his experience playing a demanding character in Simon Gray's "Butley," Don reveals the transformative power of losing oneself in a role and the profound realizations it brought him about the fluidity of self.

In this captivating episode, Don shares how embodying a character led him to question societal expectations and the rigid identities we often impose on ourselves. He offers compelling insights on how our relationships and cultural norms keep us tethered to a static idea of who we are, making personal growth a daunting task. Reflecting on the practical and legal reasons for maintaining a consistent identity, Don invites listeners to explore the balance between societal demands and the freedom to reinvent oneself. Don't miss this engaging discussion that bridges the worlds of theater and psychology, offering a fresh perspective on the roles we play every day.

Music: Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra - O mio babbino caro - Instrumental Version

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Speaker 2:

I don't know topic, subject, area, you might say, and I'll call it playing a part, and how we're all sort of playing a part. And this comes out of my background in theater. I did actually do quite a bit of theater when I was younger, quite a bit of acting, and I would notice that in the process of acting you would assume the personality of a character and it was a rather intuitive practice. So I actually played a role in a play by Simon Gray called Butley, and Butley was a professor and he would have these monologues in play. It was quite extensive monologues and really the character was pretty much the dominant character from front to back through the play. So I was not that old. So it was sort of a stretch for me, to the least, because I was playing a character that was older and here I was a younger person, maybe in my early 20s, let's say, trying to play an older professor. That's in their you know, I don't know 40s maybe. So that was a stretch and I'm not saying that this was the greatest, most successful venture in terms of acting in the history of acting, but it was an adventure for me because I had to memorize a lot of words and I had to imbue myself with the character. The character was British, so I took on a British accent. The character was sort of you know you might say an intellectual snob, so I had to take on that aspect of his character and you know, to give myself a little credit, I think I did. You know, not too bad of a job for an early, 20-something, you know person attempting to act this quite substantial role. That required quite a bit of acting skill, you might say.

Speaker 2:

But what I noticed because it was such a demanding role that when I was actually doing the performances themselves in front of an audience, that I would get so lost in the performance that it was almost like an out-of-body experience and I would become disconnected in a way from myself as a personality, from myself as Don. And what I did in essence was I had not yet heard of this term, but this is essentially what happened was I was going into a state of emptiness. There was really no thought in my head at all. I had so attuned myself or toned myself with this character that I lost all sense of thought. It was almost like there was a silence within me and I was just emoting this character's lines and this character's personality and it was almost a state of possession in a way. It's hard to explain, but it taught me something about the nature of the self at a very early age. And what it taught me about the nature of the self is that the nature of the self is, in a sense, very similar to a role. We're all playing a role.

Speaker 2:

I think we get attached to the idea that we have certain personality traits, that we are something, that we're this fixed thing, that we're Bob or Sally or Jasmine or whoever, and we have this fixed idea of what we are, who we are, what the patterns of ourselves are, and we become fixated on this and because of that we can't really change as readily as we might like to. And because we're so fixed, you know we feel like we're so fixated on being a certain thing, a certain person, and people also begin to have expectations of us to be this person. So there's sort of a reinforcement pattern that happens between our close friends and family, where they expect you to be this person and you expect yourself to be this person. And if you venture outside of that relationship, you know you do so sometimes at your own peril. You might say. I mean people might become, they might not understand. Well, why are you behaving so differently? Why are you not being normal? Why aren't you being yourself? So it goes back to this idea. Well, is there really a consistent self? I mean, why do we need this consistent self? Now, I would say that we need this consistent self for practical reasons, you might say, and for legal reasons, I mean you want to stay within the rules and regulations of society. Of course there is that. You know those things are imposed on you. You might say the law, but the law, really, you know, I think it can be embedded within you, so to speak. It can be part of you. You're not going to want to hurt people or do bad things to people or steal from them if you have compassion for them, for example.

Speaker 2:

I've always said that in my podcast and the emotional world I found to be a way to tap into. Well, what is the true self, what is the true I that we're all seeking and you know the Buddhists say, the Tibetans say, in particular is that the heart is the mind, it's not the brain, it's not the brain on top of the neck. So, to and compassion, that's beyond really words, you know, it's beyond, really, these machinations of being, and you might say that a lot of our definitions of self, a lot of our definitions of what we are, are rather shallow. I don't mean to be critical, but I'll be a little critical is that they're sort of shallow. You know mannerisms, ways of speaking, things like this. These are all rather, they're just surface things. But what's my interest a lot of times are what's below the surface. And if you look what's below the surface, you can find some intriguing things in human beings. And usually what you find that's intriguing, from my perspective, is an attempt of some people to think outside of themselves, to move outside of themselves and to grasp or understand a sense of selflessness, of moving outside the self. And also that's what acting taught me as well it's this idea of being selfless.

Speaker 2:

Oftentimes actors talk about that. Actually, when dealing with each other, they talk about being generous. An actor's generous. How is an actor generous? Generous, how is an actor generous? An actor is generous because they do a few things that evoke a generosity. An actor is generous because they listen. They listen and they're supportive of you as a fellow actor. An actor will listen to you and you will respond to them. They aren't trying to upstage you, they're not trying to be better than you. They're trying to blend holistically into the play, the text. And this idea of being harmonious, of blending into the text, of affixing yourself to the role, of blending yourself with the role, is important, I believe, to actors.

Speaker 2:

I haven't done acting in a while. I know there's a lot of technical jargon related to acting that I'm probably not that much up on, but I do know that when I was doing acting and studying acting, there was this idea of being generous, and you always will hear about an actor being generous and what that means. And what it means to me is that they're not trying to dominate the situation on stage. They're not trying to say, oh, look at me. They're not trying to say, oh, I'm the special one. I trying to say, oh, I'm the special one, I'm upstaging you, I'm the one that we need to look at.

Speaker 2:

What they want to do is they want to create a holistic feeling, emptying themselves into the part and into what the playwright has intended, in order to bring about, hopefully, a state of emotional catharsis. That's the idea behind theater. Is you bring about this emotional state of catharsis through storytelling and the actor can feel it. There's an emotional, intuitive sense that an actor will get when they get into the zone. And when they get into the zone and they feel it, they feel that they're reaching you out there in the audience, they can feel the moment and it just crystallizes for them. It becomes a really beautiful thing. It's what makes theater a really marvelous, beautiful thing to do.

Speaker 2:

Acting is particularly on the stage. The thing about film acting is you don't have an audience, you have a camera and also it's done so much piecemeal it's done, you know, a couple minutes here and then you take your setup and you move it someplace else and you shoot another segment somewhere else and you know, whatever, it's not the continuity of theater acting is lost in film acting. And the continuity of theater acting is lost in film acting and the continuity of acting allows for the actor to immerse themselves in a way into the role that I can only describe as spiritual, really, or meditative. And this is almost like, again, like an out-of-body experience that you can have, again, like an out-of-body experience that you can have, and a generous actor is looking to play their role in a way that's benefiting the whole, benefiting the whole, benefiting the whole production, benefiting what the intent of the playwright was, whether that be humorous or tragic, or neutral, cathartic, you know, whatever what's the intent of the playwright. And to find what that is, to find that voice and to help that voice come into being.

Speaker 2:

From the spiritual theorist's standpoint, the play is life. So the play of life, you know, becomes the question, becomes well, who's the author, who's the playwright, and who's authoring this life? And is anybody really authoring it, or is it just sort of ad hoc, is it sort of impromptu, or is it being authored in some way? I often marvel, because I do find that there. I think there's an intelligence in life that sometimes can seem to transcend the individual's life, and we don't always know or see this intelligence. Sometimes we don't see the pattern of how this intelligence is working until after the fact that we see that, oh yeah, if A hadn't happened, b wouldn't have happened and C wouldn't have happened. This is perfect, this is exactly how it should be, but I didn't think about it at the time.

Speaker 2:

To me, I think, mindfulness and meditation help us to reach a place where we can get more into the flow, into the continuum of life and what this intelligence is evoking us to do, and if we can do that, I think we can have a happier life because we let go of this idea of having to control everything and that we can sort of let go and let things be as they are and flow through us in a good way. I mean that sincerely, because I do believe that ultimately, we should head towards a compassionate, kind world that's my take on it at least, and that, you know, we can think, think of machinations as being well, I can do something violent or I can do something to address a supposed wrongdoer, I can answer a wrong with another wrong, so to speak, and this is the crux of conflict, as we know. But ideally, I think that, overall, that life is leading us towards what the Greeks called a sense of stasis, or peace, or balance. Stasis, a balance between things, and it's a harmonious balance, and I think this is something to ponder. You know, as I said in other podcasts, I admire the Greeks and what they've said and some of the philosophers in Greece have told us about this idea of stasis, this balance that we should seek in life, and I think that that can come out of meditation. Frankly, I think it can come out of meditation from the standpoint that we try to understand and become. This stasis, this balance, and this stasis and balance will reflect itself in our decisions and how we walk, how we talk, how we breathe, how we relate to others. This balance will reflect itself if we try to evoke it and use it in a way that allows us to be a better person. Really, I mean that's the idea.

Speaker 2:

I'll leave the podcast at that for today. I really appreciate you listening, of course, always. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon, bye, bye © B Emily Beynon. ¶¶ © transcript Emily Beynon.