Wildness As A Way Of Life

“‘Is it tame?’ Is it heck tame, it’s trained that’s all. It’s fierce, and it’s wild, and it’s not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that’s why it’s great.”

“It reminds me of that poem by Lawrence, “If men were as much men as lizards are lizards they’d be worth looking at. It just seems proud to be itself.”

These characters from Barry Hines’ novel A Kestrel for a Knave are talking about another character, known to them as Kes. Never mind that she is a bird. No matter that she would be portrayed through puppetry, and that my prior experience with puppetry is exactly zero. When the opportunity to bring her to life on stage came about, I couldn’t say no. My wild instincts called – howled – for this opportunity to be examined, understood and expressed.

Wildness among human beings is generally spoken of with trepidation. The general perception is that the creature in us wants only the simplest of pleasures and that “giving in” to them will lead us away from what is great and good in life. We value our animal nature so little as to overrule it, disdain it, and sometimes even forget about it, until that day when logic no longer serves and we are forced to make a decision”from the gut”.

We cannot escape the fact that we are wild creatures, and I like to entertain the possibility that what feels most natural might actually be good for me. To this end, I have erased the word “should” from my vocabulary and am attempting to find alternatives to Goal Setting and Time Management which keep better pace with my love for long baths. I want to live my life in acknowledgement that my instincts are the means by which I may live in tune with my own nature, and that they are often the missing link between an awareness of where I am and my desires for where I would like to go. I had a feeling that Kes might have something to teach me. After all, she’s done it before…

As part of my role in Jonathan Watkins’ dance theatre adaptation of the novel A Kestrel For A Knave by Barry Hines, I am animating a hand-held puppet to portray a kestrel (a British bird of prey). In the story, Billy Casper is a troubled 15 year-old with no prospects in 1960s Yorkshire. He is bullied at school, ignored at home and altogether ill-equipped for any path in life that might keep him out of the dreaded “pit”, the local coal mine. Through the fulfillment of his desire to raise and train Kes, Billy is transformed into a person capable of hope and wonder.

Here’s a link to a video of a trained kestrel chasing a lure that we’ve been using for research:

To begin with, I felt so big and clumsy next to the small collection of feathers, styrofoam and wires that make up the puppet’s small body. I was never so aware of the fact that I am not a bird. I began by attempting to imitate the movement of a kestrel precisely, keeping my own body as quiet as possible and focusing on the movements of my wrists and hands, using the mirror as my guide.

I quickly understood, however, through the wonderful guidance of puppeteer Rachael Canning, that the puppet is an abstract rendering of the bird’s form, and therefore its movements are likewise a representation more than they are duplication. Observation of real kestrels became helpful only as far as it led me to experience the kestrel’s physicality in my own body. Although there have been some mechanics to learn, and the puppet itself must of course remain the focus of attention, I have been shocked by how much of puppetry (certainly for this production) has to do with using the parts of me that are not my hands or my brain.

Kes with Billy, played by Chester Hayes.

At this point my relationship to that styrofoam beak, those feathered wings, is what I imagine to be Roger Federer’s relationship with his tennis racket; an extension of his body and therefore the executor of his intention. I couldn’t tell you what I am doing with my body, what shapes I am making, but I know that when I have sensation, Kes is sentient. When I am without intention, Kes is without instinct, because how could this inanimate object possibly convey any of that without me?

The motivations and feelings of a character are always a matter of highly subjective speculation on the part of the performer, but perhaps never more so as when that character is of a different species! In this case, it’s hard to tell sometimes whether I am creating the character, or the character is creating me. I wonder if Roger Federer ever has the feeling that his racket is MOVING HIM? The racket is inanimate without him, but in his hands perhaps there is an inevitability to the path it follows, a swing that he can feel before he even moves, all driven by the specific demands of the moment. It has been difficult at times to trust that my instincts for Kes’ movement might be as valuable as a painstaking reconstruction of the “real thing”, but our greatest breakthroughs in learning how to bring her to life have been moments when I am improvising a scene with Jonathan or my scene partner, entirely without thinking and guided only by what it feels like what the puppet “wants” to do.

Not only do I get to bring Kes’ wildness to life; she is teaching me to trust my own. She is driven by the desires for food and freedom (and probably a lot more, but that’s plenty for this puppeteer novice to be getting along with). Like a great tennis player, her actions reach towards those ends with devastating precision, efficiency and spontaneity. I cannot think of a better definition of wildness, and for her it is a way of life. She inspires me (the way she inspires Billy Casper) to adopt it as my own.

I have a suspicion that, eventually, I may have to come to terms with all manner of devastatingly efficient, uncivilized truths, such as: I will never, ever do my own laundry, even when I’m broke; my secret ballet dreams might be ever so slightly past their sell-by-date; and yes, women can be both intelligent and madly in love. Because living by those personal truths is what it will take for me to act in line with my own nature, and pursue my desires with the freedom of a kestrel flying after a tasty sparrow. Wildness is often less violent, less sexy and less random than we fetishize it to be.

Maybe, just maybe, spending all those millennia evolving our animal selves was a good use of our time.

For more sneak-peak pictures and information about the show: http://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/event/kes-14/

The Ultimate Portable Altar

Santa Barbara, 2012

“When you have nomadic people, the direction of the worship is to that which is extensive and everywhere: the all-covering sky, the all-spreading Earth, the wind, the moon, the sun. The altars are transportable. The deities are universal and eternal presences.”
Joseph Campbell

As a proud survivor of British boarding school – a ballet boarding school no less – my relationship to home is best described as an endless pursuit of stillness. Dancing dreams coaxed me into flight from a loving family nest at the age of eleven, and that early independence developed in me an inclination to wander and a restless curiosity. While I love New York and call it home, I feel most at ease on an airplane between two continents.

Home is a thing I carry with me. It’s buried into the heels of my tango shoes when I pack my bag for the day. It lives in the memories released by the smell of fall leaves and in my Mother’s stories about her garden. A piece of it stays with every character I get to inhabit on stage, and I hear it in my boyfriend’s voice – even when it’s over skype from across an ocean. It’s a mobile definition of home: a dynamic force and a special moment in time rather than a geographical location.

So although I delight in matching my cushions to my wall paint, adore nights in catching up with my roommate over a bottle of wine, and practically swoon over square-shaped plates, I consider myself a wanderer at heart. A nomad.

Belize, January 2014

At its best, it’s a perspective that feels exhilarating, joyful and the ultimate expression of creative freedom. It can also be exhausting, infuriating and whatever is the opposite of a grounded way of life. I started writing this in limbo between two particularly far-flung adventures: a vacation in Belize and a project in the UK, sitting in a bar in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport in the middle of a snowstorm because my apartment was rented out. Now I’m posting it from a cafe in Sheffield, UK.

It’s a perspective that has you driving through blizzards and stumbling through a jungle by the light of an iPhone (because it was essential to see the sunset from the top of a mountain) – and in the same week. It was quite a week. It’s not always sensible, but it all feels as necessary as breathing.

Different lifestyles beget different spiritual practices. I like mine to be as mobile as the hair on my head. I have worked hard to find a quiet, contemplative place to visit within my own person for the frequent occasions when it is the only space of that kind available. And since every mysterious experience I have ever had has also been a physical one, the idea that the flesh must be transcended in order to encounter the Divine does not sit well with me.

I have come to think of my body as being the ultimate portable altar. Its very mortality is what gives meaning to every offering of generosity, gratitude or service. For example: If I was going to live forever, the laws of probability dictate that I’d get around to helping a friend move into a fourth floor walk-up (or its futuristic equivalent) eventually. It’s choosing to do it now, with this body, for this person, for this reason, that means something.

This afternoon, Sheffield, UK.

So what is the creed of this nomadic religion? By the body’s own logic, there is no higher morality than pleasure. You cannot feel truly, deeply good to the centre of your bones if you know that your comfort has come at the expense of another being, and I cannot think of a physical state that is more like an experience of the divine. I’m not talking about a state of comfortable complacency here, or a quick fix for some neglected or damaged part of the psyche. I mean a dynamic state of constant revelation and transformation; the active pursuit of what feels like home in each moment. It is the state in which we may wonder at the beauty of flowers, long for an absent beloved, feel the pride in a job well done or the full pain of grief, interpret dreams and dance without the fear of judgment. With the body as our altar, its actions as our offering, and the pursuit of deep, true pleasure as the moral standard to which we aspire, we gain a wanderer’s ability to direct our worship towards all that we encounter.