georginasand (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
georginasand) wrote2008-11-02 04:16 pm
georginasand) wrote2008-11-02 04:16 pm
Zen D@$* It ?
"Past tense means you used to be nervous" ~ Anonymous (Once I read a quote credited to Anon and spent ten minutes on wikipedia trying to figure out who he was)
The boys on my floor, particularly the Flying Dutchmen, have made a habit of trying to scare the living daylights out of me, would probably scare the dead daylights out of me too, but they aren't that ambitious. This is a habit that they practice at any moment since they learned that I am a bit on the jumpy side. Stepping through the steam of a recently put out fire to appearing horizontally around my door frame, if it will make me scream or dissolve into a fit of giggles they will do it. This of course embarrasses me to no end, because...well I like to think of myself as a strong and brave person, which I am in some cases, but this is not one of them.
I am jumpy because I am a ridiculously tense person. Merry is the only person I know who is more tense, and only because her body is on crusade to drive her up a wall. That and she watches more sci-fi than I do, so he brain rushes to worst case scenarios only slightly faster. Part of why I am so tense is physcological. I am terrified of people, I don't know why... so hands off Freud, and it is the natural tendancy to tense up around things that scare you. Let's face it, I spend a lot of time around people. I associate relaxing with letting my guard down. It has only been of late that I can handle hugs, thanks to several really touchy friends and their sheer persistance, but before I couldn't tell the difference between a hug and an outright attack. The other half is physical, muscle memory. I have going on ten years of ballet teaching teaching me not to be relaxed. And yes, I understand the irony that you have to be relaxed to dance and that I dance to blow off steam, but as much as is about art and asthetics, ballet is about pain, and stretching, and fighting to make your body do something that it shouldn't be able to do,but you're a dancer so by sheer force of will and a little bit of theatrical magic, you'll do it. So on top of the fact that my muscles have largely forgotten how to relax, I equate relaxing with giving up.
Being uptight is how I get things done. My former co-costume crew-chief has asked me innumerable times (read: at least once) to "go smoke some weed and mellow out." She was kidding, but she wasn't. I don't get stressed, but I get focused (that is to say, zen damnit) and then I am a not so relaxed force to be reckoned with.
So as the Flying Dutchman has started this crusade to get me to relax, I've thought a lot about why I do or do not relax. On the one hand I know that being able to relax would make me a better dancer, a much better actor (and I quote the Actor's Neutral Expert of the TAWT acting workshop: Everyone holds tension in somewhere, Georgie just holds it everywhere), a more personable person, and generally less nervous. But at the same time, it's like the previously mentioned thorns, being uptight is so much a part of who I am I don't know if
I could bear to part with it.
I remain,
Georgie
The boys on my floor, particularly the Flying Dutchmen, have made a habit of trying to scare the living daylights out of me, would probably scare the dead daylights out of me too, but they aren't that ambitious. This is a habit that they practice at any moment since they learned that I am a bit on the jumpy side. Stepping through the steam of a recently put out fire to appearing horizontally around my door frame, if it will make me scream or dissolve into a fit of giggles they will do it. This of course embarrasses me to no end, because...well I like to think of myself as a strong and brave person, which I am in some cases, but this is not one of them.
I am jumpy because I am a ridiculously tense person. Merry is the only person I know who is more tense, and only because her body is on crusade to drive her up a wall. That and she watches more sci-fi than I do, so he brain rushes to worst case scenarios only slightly faster. Part of why I am so tense is physcological. I am terrified of people, I don't know why... so hands off Freud, and it is the natural tendancy to tense up around things that scare you. Let's face it, I spend a lot of time around people. I associate relaxing with letting my guard down. It has only been of late that I can handle hugs, thanks to several really touchy friends and their sheer persistance, but before I couldn't tell the difference between a hug and an outright attack. The other half is physical, muscle memory. I have going on ten years of ballet teaching teaching me not to be relaxed. And yes, I understand the irony that you have to be relaxed to dance and that I dance to blow off steam, but as much as is about art and asthetics, ballet is about pain, and stretching, and fighting to make your body do something that it shouldn't be able to do,but you're a dancer so by sheer force of will and a little bit of theatrical magic, you'll do it. So on top of the fact that my muscles have largely forgotten how to relax, I equate relaxing with giving up.
Being uptight is how I get things done. My former co-costume crew-chief has asked me innumerable times (read: at least once) to "go smoke some weed and mellow out." She was kidding, but she wasn't. I don't get stressed, but I get focused (that is to say, zen damnit) and then I am a not so relaxed force to be reckoned with.
So as the Flying Dutchman has started this crusade to get me to relax, I've thought a lot about why I do or do not relax. On the one hand I know that being able to relax would make me a better dancer, a much better actor (and I quote the Actor's Neutral Expert of the TAWT acting workshop: Everyone holds tension in somewhere, Georgie just holds it everywhere), a more personable person, and generally less nervous. But at the same time, it's like the previously mentioned thorns, being uptight is so much a part of who I am I don't know if
I could bear to part with it.
I remain,
Georgie