An advanced seminar on the art of acting, part one: “… and then the body has to follow”

I am STILL feeling bad about this. As if I had no business at all to write about acting. Nonetheless I have been doing it since my first post - where I became conscious of what John Cleese had been doing with Petrucchio and the effect it had on me. In most cases it is just obvious, so that I don’t NOTICE, but not necessarily with a comedy character and a bully: He made him appear like a human being. As weird as this might be: I understood COMPLETELY why Petrucchio was doing what he was doing. And I never stopped being interested in this. Of course I will never know what acting is LIKE – it is the kind of thing you only know when you are doing it. And because of this I am not even really interested in the “technical” side. (What exactly it is actors learn in acting school.) Nonetheless I had a certain understanding “from the outside” – which I discovered wasn’t all wrong. But listening to Tom Hiddleston explaining his art in this clear, systematic, and comprehensive way kind of transported my understanding of the matter from pre-school to university level. So, it is not MY seminar about acting, of course, but a summary of what I have LEARNED listening to Tom Hiddleston.

It always starts with what I have been dealing with from the beginning:

“If there is an art to acting, it is inhabiting characters fully. It begins with an active empathy or understanding …”

Which is already so much more to the point than anything I could have written. But it is basically what I have been dealing with from the start. The next step doesn’t appear like a big step but it is actually EVERYTHING that has to happen for the empathy and understanding to become reality, and available to us:

“… AND THEN THE BODY HAS TO FOLLOW.”

Written down like this it appears trivial but it is actually what makes what “we” are doing different from what actors are doing and what I will never really understand.  I kind of covered it with my distinction between PLAYING and ACTING which roughly serves the purpose because everything that is about empathy and backstories, research, “learning to read, learning to think” (Tom Hiddleston), belongs into the domain of PLAYING – which is what “we” are doing anyway. Which, of course, DOESN’T mean that you cannot get SO MUCH better at it. So much better than “we” could even imagine.

(One might think that, with all this necessary empathy, actors must be these great empathic people. But I don’t think this is NECESSARILY so. I think we misunderstand where empathy comes from. Scientists attribute it to something they call “mirror neurons” – which not only humans have, but not even all kinds of primates, whereas there are birds, like ravens or crows, that have them! You find out by putting a mirror in front of them and observing if they show signs of recognizing themselves. Empathy can only arise from this distinction between us and other beings. That we can locate pain and pleasure, and actions and so on in this being in the mirror. Because of this experience we begin to attribute the same feelings and intentions to others. I suppose most people don’t get that. I didn’t, really, until I learned about birds and mirror-neurons. Shakespeare did, of course, ages before there were any theories about it: “There is no creature loves me (…) and when I die no soul will pity me. And wherefore should they since that I myself find in myself no pity to myself.” (My favourite from Richard III) I even think that I get partially more empathic and interested in different kinds of people and their predicaments THROUGH reading, but in the first place it’s all about myself. So, great actors might just be people who have a special relationship with this being in the mirror. Who, for some reason, became particularly good at “locating”.)

ACTING – as a counterpart to playing! – is certainly something we are doing anyway as well, as it is everything we are doing using our body, voice, facial expression and so on to make us appear like the people we want to be, or have to be. What we have to do to convince others – or bully them, or make them like us, or whatever. Not least: getting them to act in the way we want them to! (As I have already written, the distinction serves to clarify things for myself. For actors, this probably wouldn’t be a useful distinction. For them, naturally, everything they do professionally is acting.) In my terminology ACTING is what is defined by this sentence: THE BODY HAS TO FOLLOW. And there is, of course, a huge difference between “every day” and professional acting. Quite often, the body “follows” automatically what we are just playing - in a natural and a professional context! - but really great acting requires to make the body follow in EVERYTHING somebody is thinking and feeling in order to “inhabit characters fully”.

A huge part of it is certainly about physical fitness. I am constantly amazed at the physical prowess actors suddenly display who look anything but young and fit. Like recently: Simon Russell Beale jumping up and down like a space hopper in “Stalin”, or Ray Winstone doing handstands in “King of Thieves”. But this is only the tip of the iceberg which we SEE. For people like me with a desk job it is unimaginable to be physically “available” all the time in this way, which, I think, is a basic requirement of the job. Obviously, Tom Hiddleston was aware that a lot of what he would need to become a good actor was already “there”. He certainly made good use of studying classics at Cambridge, “learning to read, learning to think”, but he knew that he needed a whole new body, in a way, to be able to play a major role in Shakespeare for twelve weeks in a row. If the old body breaks down, everything else you have worked out will as well! But there is another aspect to doing more than is strictly required on this front that is even more important, as he explains on behalf of “Coriolanus”:

I did a lot of extra physical work, just to give myself that sense of feeling fitter, feeling stronger, feeling more like I could climb that ladder … It was about the kind of muscularity that the character needed.

As most people would know from experience, if they paid attention to it, the mind also follows the body – not just the other way round. So, even a small improvement through workout, as I found, can make a huge difference even to the person I am. A lot of confidence comes from having a stronger back (and a stronger butt!) and therefore naturally walking more upright. So, the EASIEST way to convince yourself that you are the person who can climb this ladder is actually DOING it really well. (There is also the reverse, something I admire even more and which, I believe, is difficult to do convincingly: impersonating somebody who is older than the actors themselves, weaker, or “reduced” by illness or a disability. Even, maybe, just a “normal” person who DOESN’T spend regular hours at a studio! It must be really difficult – and not particularly agreeable in certain cases - to find out how it feels to be in such a body if you are exceedingly fit, muscular, and healthy.)

   

It doesn’t appear like a big thing, but “the body has to follow” finally explained to me why, even though I value the playing higher, it is so important for me to SEE the acting. What makes our every day acting so fundamentally different from what actors are doing is of course that we are “impersonating” ourselves whereas they are impersonating other people. And, for us to believe that they really ARE these people, they have to “inhabit” these characters “fully”. That means they cannot leave any “gaps” or nondescript areas in their physical expression of the character. (Which “we” can do, and are very likely to do all the time!) This is what fascinates me and where I, quite often, see or determine which actors are extra special and which are just adequate actors. (You virtually don’t see any BAD acting where I am watching = with BRITISH actors!)

I just hit on this beautiful example – one of many, many examples! – finally watching the old British TV adaptation of “House of Cards”. There was a favourite moment – of many, many totally enjoyable (or horrific!) moments: the conversation between “His Majesty” and David Mycroft, his secretary and closest confidant, trying to tell his employer that he is in a relationship with a man. There is an accuracy and truth in how both actors are acting that made me prick my ears and sit upright. Especially Nicholas Farrell (playing David Mycroft) whom I have liked since “Sparkhouse” (where he played one of the scary “patriarchs”), but I never knew why I liked him. There was a totally weird moment in my watching the series before this where I thought: Oh, I never knew he was gay! But this was BEFORE we know that David Mycroft is gay, and I inaccurately attributed what I was seeing him PLAY to the actor. (Who isn’t, by the way, or not likely to be. I checked for this purpose, and he is married with two children.) Totally weird because he didn’t actually DO anything, he just suddenly appeared gay! And then, in this scene with the King, I could READ on his face kind of like word for word – or rather sentence for sentence – what David Mycroft is thinking. Of course I couldn’t translate this into ACTUAL sentences, but THE WAY WE READ FACES you just couldn’t make it any clearer. And I just enjoy the completeness and truthfulness of such moments more if I NOTICE the acting. If anything, I am moved MORE instead of less. And I certainly UNDERSTAND better when I can see what they are doing. (But this might be an oddity which just applies to me: that I am often moved deeper by understanding what other people are about than by feeling something. There must be a reason that “predicament” is kind of my favourite word …)

And there is a great transition to part two which “is all about DETAIL”  …

There are many things in the womb of time that will be delivered …

Groundbreaking things happened, and I had to leave my philosopher’s haven and set out to sea … for how long I do not know. Nor do I know how to handle all this, so, maybe, I begin with the beginning. After watching “Coriolanus” and getting back to Claudia with how impressed I had been, she alerted me to the talk Tom Hiddleston had with the director, Josie Rourke on YouTube. I listened to it and was so impressed!!! I will never find the time to deal with everything that is in there, so I don’t even start. The second most exciting thing was about Shakespeare, and this will probably become a post in due time. Meanwhile there are more pressing matters.

The most exciting thing I only realized when I started to think about the talk. It was that, for the first time in my life, I had been allowed to access somebody’s “inner space”. Not just to get a peek through a window and guess what might be in there, but really ENTER and kind of walk around in it. I can even see it, before my inner eye: the colour scheme is rather dark, brownish – which probably doesn’t mean anything, might just be a colour impression I got from the video? – but well-lit, with golden lights, and very clear vertical lines, like rays of light … it will become evident a little later why this is important.

This was not, of course, like the whole house, just the well-lit and carefully structured part where you can let other people in because it is about something they understand and which might concern them as well. As it did me. There was a lot more than just Shakespeare where we were surprisingly in sync. At the moment I am not dealing with the content only with the groundbreaking effect this experience had on my own inner world. It furnished me with something I totally needed.

I had, for the first time, “seen” a “mind palace”. The concept comes from “Sherlock” (the series with Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch). Quotation marks because a mind palace is not something one would ever see. It is a method of accessing inner content. As Sherlock is probably on the autistic spectrum, he remembers EVERYTHING, but – even though he probably spends hours deleting unnecessary data like the world revolving around the sun! – this is way too much. So he needs a method to store data in a way he can retrieve it. Go into his mind, walk around in there, enter different rooms or similar to look at their content. Listening to Tom Hiddleston explaining his art, I felt as if there was a tangible structure to his thinking and feeling, and dealing with it, and that this was organized in a way that felt very familiar. So, if I could just access MY OWN content IN THE SAME WAY …

But this idea only came to me about three days later – when I suddenly needed it. This was when I had finally got hold of this interview Richard Armitage gave The Telegraph in January. As I don’t read the twitter, I didn’t yet know about it in January – which was a good thing because it would have “crossed” the “Uncle Vanya” experience. It was at the beginning of March – immediately before I got cut off everything for about eight weeks because of the corona virus, best time of my life!!! – that I hit on the link by chance but couldn’t retrieve the full text. This is so embarrassing!!! Me being a librarian and unable to find a way to read this damned interview! I knew that I HAD to get it, though, because I had a fairly good idea of what it would contain. After being back at work, I employed a proper librarian, and she got it for me in no time at all!

Even though I “suspected” from the beginning, the confirmation, I knew, would bring some kind of groundbreaking change to my inner world. I remember distinctly watching Richard Armitage’s interview on “North and South” – which I must have bought at the beginning of 2013! - where he referred to the moment in the film where John Thornton is watching her leave and whispers: “Turn around – please!” (or similar) which had been one of his favourite moments. And he said that he didn’t have to act because he knew exactly what it felt like. As usual, I was touched by the candour, but thought at the same time: Ummm - but this was about a man, wasn’t it? - So, I was more than “forewarned”, but as I never bother with believing things I will probably never know, there was this big “blank” instead that imagination automatically filled in. Now I would have to go there and deal with the bullshit, and I didn’t have the faintest idea what might happen as a result. I just felt that it would be so much better if I knew and could “monitor” the change.

It hit me then that there was – of course! – a room in my “mind palace” with “RA” written on the door, and that I could just try and go in there and have a look because I am doing this once a day at least anyway. So I did, and decided that this room didn’t just need a spring cleaning, it needed to be refurbished completely! – I must say I wasn’t just surprised but dumbfounded by the immediate success when I tried this. It was certainly emotional, but it was done in a day – the interview was extremely helpful in VARIOUS respects! – and I am quite pleased with the result. The colour scheme is up to date now, and it is light and well-aired. And finally fully furnished – as completely as it will probably ever be. And, most importantly, all the bullshit got cleared out. It feels very convincing, but also kind of … bleak and sad?

Maybe that’s just the exhaustion - and I will still have to get used to the new look and feel of it. For now I would very much need that room with “Me” on the door. To get a bit of solace, or just catch up on my sleep  … Didn’t find it. Why? Shouldn't there be one …?!!!

The last question got answered partially when – impressed by my success – I immediately proceeded to the next project. Which, at first, looked less like work and more like play. I had finally watched the “Thor” films immediately before watching the talk, and was very much moved by the impression that Tom Hiddleston and Loki had had a GENUINE relationship. Because I knew I had too. Watching the films (which are still bad, except for Loki!), I realized that Loki had become one of my three favourite characters in world literature – with Snorri the Priest from the Icelandic Sagas and Ulysses from the Iliad. I knew there was a room with “Loki” on the door since I watched “Hannibal” (the series) in 2016. That’s when I opened it for the first time, unintentionally, and looked, but didn’t really get it. Now I finally stepped inside - and there it was! All of it.

Prize question: What is the worst thing you will ever find opening one of these doors?

By the way, I am rather certain that Tom Hiddleston, who appears like a genuinely likeable person, DIDN’T have a room with “Loki” on the door – as I do. But he was able to BUILD one. And then GENUINELY inhabit it. That is why he is such a great actor. Looking at these separate rooms, I finally understand why somebody can play ugly, horrible, and despicable characters really well - people they would fear or loathe in real life, or that are so unlike them that it is ridiculous – and this will never have any repercussions on them as a person! As Richard Armitage put it in the interview with his usual shocking precision: “… PART of me always felt: Well, isn’t this why we are actors?”

Certainly – that’s where I am always looking for proof that I don’t just like the person but that they really are great actors. I only “believe” in them when I have seen them play very DIFFERENT characters. On the other hand, listening closely to Tom Hiddleston, I became aware that there is always this urge or need to GIVE this bit of themselves. Of THEIR OWN truth. Which I understand so well because I know it so well myself. I think this is what I always see in Ralph Fiennes – and become fascinated how somebody can be so totally “shameless” about it. Or Christopher Eccleston, whom I have seen being so different so many times as I have seen no other actor. But there is always something to it that is a hundred and twenty percent Chris Eccleston. Nobody could be this or do this quite as he does … About Richard Armitage I just realize how successful my newfound method to access my inner space has been. I had always seen it but didn’t really know what it was. Now I know – and it has always been the same. His self-assessed “melancholy”, and this solitude – not outwardly, of course, but somewhere deep down running through this whole life. It is something so special and strange about SHARING his solitude with us. I think this is why his characters always feel so utterly convincing.

Strange year, this year … the 22^nd of August must have come early. 😉 (More reason for congratulations, maybe, than hitting 49?) I suppose there are always “many things in the womb of time that will be delivered”. Only sometimes they actually are!

 

The text vortex - “structure and movement”

The digression about theatre in my last posts actually helped to prepare the ground for the next step in my terminology. Rather early on in my blog I (re)discovered Schiller’s concept of (aesthetic) PLAYING in his “Aesthetic Education” as a fundamental part of my reading. It certainly had an impact on the discovery of the dichotomy of playing and acting in my last post. Playing – not acting! – turned out as the fundamental concept to describe a successful theatre experience. Acting is really important, though, in the way directing, set design, lighting et cetera is. We are not supposed to notice it, but there is no good show without professional acting. To describe what HAPPENS WITH US when we are happy in the theatre, though, and why it is such a special experience, PLAYING is the key. Films CAN be a lot like this if the focus is on the playing, and the playing is so very special, as I remember, for example, from Woody Allen’s “Wonder Wheel” or, recently, “My Zoe”. But there also are fictional situations that can only arise on a stage. My most striking experience of this kind was “No Man’s Land” (with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart) where the inconsequential talking revealed this abyss between the thin layer of our communicating and the mute bulk of our physical and mental existence kind of materializing on the stage. (I realize for the first time that the title indicates how successful my reading has been!) But this was certainly not the only incident of this kind – where theatre was just so different. The opportunity to actually WITNESS the playing – or notice its absence! - in an opposed party – the actor – makes it immediately obvious that it is not just I playing with the text but also THE TEXT PLAYING WITH ME.

I must say, I am rather amused with my official coming out as a philosopher. And bewildered because it feels as if I carried more responsibility for the binding character of what I am writing. But this is just a misunderstanding. I have always been sceptical of any kind of systematic philosophy because it means that I have to believe in something – if only in the fact that this kind of “absolute” truth philosophers are trying to establish through their thinking exists. I am not even sure if I believe in this kind of truth or not, but I have found that believing is hugely overrated. It doesn’t matter what I BELIEVE, or just as a point of reference for what I am going to DISCOVER. In my experience there are three kinds of small children – after the age where they cram everything they see into their mouths: the kind that is fascinated with throwing pebbles, the kind that is fascinated with digging holes, and the kind that cannot be bothered. Growing up, for most people, means that they can BEGIN to do a lot of things, like driving a car, drinking alcohol, having sex, making money. In fact, it is the time where we STOP doing most things we used to do – and that used to feel good! - like throwing pebbles, screaming like banshees, running around like mad, riding a swing, going swimming in ice-cold water, crying, running up stairs, picking fights, climbing trees, rescuing earthworms, painting pictures, picking our noses, telling people what we really think, playing, maybe even masturbating … and of course digging holes! The only reason that we still appear faintly human might be that everybody else has stopped as well doing any of these things and being interested in anything else than money, sex, cooking, cars, alcohol, work, interior decoration, and football. And, maybe, that most people maintain a secret reserve of “kid things” they just cannot stop doing. In my case it was DIGGING HOLES. Therefore I became a philosopher “naturally” because this is what philosophers do. Stepping between the neat rows of established truths to dig holes. Once you have got the hang of it, you cannot stop. And – unfortunately! - it implies thinking and writing things other people don’t understand because – even if they are themselves digging – they are seldom down the SAME hole digging for things beneath and in-between politically and otherwise correct truths. Like all philosophers, I am constantly trying to be totally clear and intelligible – and usually fail. It is an occupational hazard.

For a primitive philosopher of this kind there isn’t even a fundamental inhibition from being a constructivist and a realist, an empiricist and an idealist, a rationalist and a phenomenologist at the same time. The only thing you really need is some kind of “toolbox” for making concepts. I usually know WHEN I have found something, but, if it is new, I don’t know yet what it is. And strangely, only when I have a WORD for it, I can begin to find out. “In the beginning there was the word  …”, for me, is the most perceptive thing anyone ever wrote, (apart from: “I know that I know nothing”.) And, while I am busy finding out, my world is growing around me and the digging picking up pace … This is also - I just realize - rather wild and weird for a method. The TEXT VORTEX is my stellar example for it, therefore the lengthy introduction.  

I don’t really remember now, but I think it was a random find. I had developed some idea of what I am doing when I am reading, but WHAT is it that makes me do it? Why does it work so well with a certain kind of text – like “Shakespeare” – and not so well with others, or not at all. Besides, I KNOW – for example right now listening to the Brandenburg concertos played by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields – that there is not just me doing something with the text but an incredibly strong “force field” created by the text, just DRAWING ME IN. So much stronger than – and so different from - anything else that might hold my interest for a while, like a game, a match, other people’s conversation, or even something totally strange and mesmerizing like cats having sex … (they don’t “mate”, they are actually having sex!) I began to call it the “black box”, but this only meant that I would never know anything about what a fictional text is “doing”. The only thing I had established is that it is doing SOMETHING. And there is a corresponding black box inside ME because the biggest part of the emotions, experiences, thoughts, dreams, motivations, and memories I use for my reading stays hidden from me as well. Until I “found” more, my theory about reading would stay unfinished.    

I remembered that somebody had used the metaphor of the VORTEX to describe poetry, but I couldn’t retrieve the quote. I think it stuck because of the necessary COMBINATION of STRUCTURE and MOVEMENT. The idea of an object that only exists because of their working together. I wasn’t even aware until recently that there is an empirical context! Though it is probably a common and frequent occurrence in nature, we only become aware of a vortex when it gets huge and threatening. The vortex as the visible part of a tornado that emerges out of nowhere and sucks up everything that gets in its way. Or the dangerous whirlpool that drags ships under water and grinds them to splinters. It is an amazing metaphor – because of the giant impact of the forces at work and the fundamental difference a vortex creates between the outside world and the totally void and still space on the inside. It sucks us in like NOTHING ELSE and, once inside, the outward world ceases to exist.

(It is the strongest image I can think of for “concentrating” – and that is probably what text and “really reading” is about for me. Just as an activity and a state I want to be in. I cannot bear to be caught in this “half-state” where I am busy but kind of spread out in all directions. Where there is movement everywhere but my “centre” is totally inactive – and which, I imagine, is the state most people are in most of the time. Especially since “we” have stopped doing complicated – or boring but necessary - things with our hands for hours on end and got focused that way. Instead, our attention gets scrambled in chat rooms and on twitter.)  

One of the first dichotomies I created to describe what happens in “Shakespeare” was STRUCTURE AND BEAUTY – where the “and” is as important as any of the terms. Structure as such is nothing. I have always been good at analysing poetry because I liked to detect and describe text structure, but the most important thing I learned from it is that structure ALONE is nothing. Without movement it is dead. It can do nothing – not even in the inanimate world. The interdependence of structure and energy is what physics is dealing with most of the time, and – to be honest – a complete mystery to me … So, I could detect as much structure as I wanted in “Shakespeare”, but I had still to understand BEAUTY.

I think I never understood beauty before I hit on my second favourite quote from “The Lord of the Rings” where Gimli describes his reaction to Galadriel’s gift:

I have looked last on what is fairest (…) Henceforward I will call nothing fair unless it be her gift.

This was a highly subjective moment because the reason I understood is that the same thing had just happened to me. It is the kind of thing that only happens ONCE in a person’s life. I became aware that I had found what I had always been looking for. I think there were a few times in my life where I got excited and thought I might KNOW what I was looking for – therefore I never gave up. But this time I had FOUND what I was looking for. Completely unexpectedly, it was there – just before my eyes!

I put “beauty” in quotation marks here, just once, to indicate that it is a metaphor, but – like every good metaphor – it has a necessary connection to the real thing. The word is just spread out so widely that it mostly stopped meaning anything. One can have a beautiful person, a beautiful necklace, and a beautiful goal, and what not, but everybody probably remembers one of these instances of having been TOUCHED by beauty. It is this EXPERIENCE the metaphor refers to – and, when it happened to me on this occasion, I discovered that beauty is the only ABSOLUTE category I subscribe to. For me there is no absolute goodness, or truth, or moral values, or whatever – probably because I am even more of an empiricist than I thought??? - but I actually FOUND absolute beauty. The experience certainly derived from the unexpected perfection of the “object” I found, but of course I know that this perfection is NOT absolute. It is just that the object matched MY INNER CONCEPTION of what a human being should be like – as to looks but, more importantly, to “content” - to a degree I could never have imagined. Before I had found it, I DIDN’T KNOW what was in ME! - Finding the perfect object happened entirely by chance – as for Gimli who might never have seen Galadriel if he hadn’t gone on that journey. I could never have brought this about on my own – and I like this! It makes the event so much more valuable: to realize that it is just chance that my life hadn’t been in vain. I might have died at the age of forty-five like my father and never seen it. But I didn’t!

The kind of beauty I had hit upon is absolute. Its point is exactly that it doesn’t compare with ANYTHING else. But there is a serious drawback because it only “happens” ONCE. We have found everything we were looking for, everything we ever wished for, in another (human) being, but we cannot “keep” it. Gimli intends to put the golden hairs of Galadriel into some kind of shrine to preserve them forever, but he knows that this is not sufficient. It will help to create a memory of the “real thing”, but, sadly, “memory is not what the heart desires”. Of course memory serves, to a degree, and we would be beggars without it, but the impact of beauty on us will fade. Reading and analysing Sonnet 5 – in what became, I think, my third post – I first understood what POETRY can do so much better than anything else: PERPETUATE a state like this. I think, reading this poem, I really captured the “vortex energy” that holds it together by getting to the bottom of how beauty is able to MOVE us.

BEAUTY in text depends on STRUCTURE – which is basically just what we are motivated to select as we have learned to prefer it. Obviously, there is a basic kind of beauty in structure – which makes us prefer highly structured phenomena and play with them. (Thence the attraction of sudoku, magic cubes and the like.) Therefore it is the AESTHETIC CATEGORY that comes to mind first, but not the only one. The way “beauty” happened to me is probably rather exotic, and I used it as an example to show how a TEXT VORTEX works just because this was how I discovered it. There are lots of other aesthetic categories, other kinds of “movement” - like horror, action, or story - that have little connection with beauty, or none at all. Having a conversation with Claudia recently about our motivations for reading alerted me to the fact that my own conception is much too narrow and subjective. For a valid theory, a potentially unlimited amount of aesthetic categories would have to be included. But, looking into the text vortex, I find that STRUCTURE AND MOVEMENT might do the trick. There certainly is structure and the potential to “move” us in every kind of (fictional) text but only WHEN WE ENGAGE the vortex appears “out of nowhere”.

I realize that the way I use MOVEMENT as a concept is rather cheeky because I am trying to bring its literal meaning – as in physical movement – and its metaphoric content – as in being moved emotionally – back together into one concept. But this might be exactly the point of movement as an AESTHETIC term, as we can be moved in several ways at the same time. And different kinds of movement are playing into each other. For example, being moved by beauty – in actors, scenery, voices and so on - usually makes me more amenable to notice and enjoy other content.

Mostly, the aesthetic experience is so complex that I don’t know WHAT triggered it. For example, seeing “The Crucible” again on Digital Theatre last year just confirmed my first impression about it that was one of pure aesthetical joy because it is the most perfect and perceptive and “emotionally complete” production of a play I have ever seen. Above all, I just enjoyed the COMPLETENESS of the aesthetic experience. EVERYTHING I could have wished for WAS THERE – and too complex to analyse. (Feeling shitty for days after I had seen it might just have been because of the realization that it was over – and something like this was unlikely to happen again.) Or like, just now, seeing “Coriolanus” with Tom Hiddleston, where the production of the play was so brilliant and convincing that I suddenly liked and understood a text I find indigestible every time I am trying to read it. So, I suppose, the multiple indigestible bits were just swallowed up by all the good? Most of the time, the “movement” is just so big that I get swept away without getting to know a lot about it. But, even though I rarely know WHAT is happening, I always know WHEN. And this is in fact my best empirical proof for the existence of a vortex.

In extreme cases this might even be AFTER I have read it. This happens frequently with films, on my way home from the cinema, when it suddenly hits me what it was I have seen. My most striking example for these dynamics was “Mother” – where I didn’t enjoy anything about the film and sat through it bored, even disgusted, until, right at the end, this giant metaphor came crashing down on me. A kind of “crash” I have learned to appreciate! – There obviously is a different “vortex energy” or “structure” for different kinds of fiction. Something like this is very unlikely to happen with a novel because I wouldn’t read through hundreds of pages being bored and disgusted - though the “pull” of the story might be strong enough to drag me through. But mostly I drop out of aesthetically unsatisfactory prose. STORY – or, more precisely in this context: text elements we are used to create stories from! - is probably the primary “vortex energy engine” in most kinds of fiction, the one that always works. Way back in this blog I discovered to my amusement that I constantly try to “skip” story and proceed directly to the “juicy” human stuff I am shooting for. And how this sometimes makes my reading downright ridiculous. Treating story as secondary might even be what often leads to these “delays” in really reading. Recently listening to “The Other People” read by Richard Armitage, it happened after about two hours. As it is often the case for me with crime stories, I get overwhelmed by puzzling and irrelevant detail and fail to see the wood for all the trees – and this means I usually don’t read them. But then the aesthetic atmosphere created through the intimacy of the voice suddenly sucked me in. Only then did I begin to enjoy the story!

In the theatre, a delayed experience like this is not possible. There must be SOMETHING I want to engage with from the beginning. Otherwise I become immediately aware that this is not a place where I want to be. Seeing Ralph Fiennes in “Antony and Cleopatra”, I knew after a few minutes that I shouldn’t have been getting on that plane. And the beginning of “Uncle Vanya” didn’t become a disaster only because I knew half of the actors and trusted them. (It STILL was a disagreeable quarter of an hour!) The aesthetic experience may build up slowly – as it did in “No Man’s Land” where I didn’t understand from the beginning what it might be about. But there must have been SOMETHING there from the beginning – which I identified as the PLAYING. It was obvious that both actors really ENJOYED being there and doing this. There is a PERSONAL dimension which I totally like but which also makes it so precarious. Only when I can see that they are playing – and confident! - I am feeling safe and happy myself, and ready to engage and be moved. Then we are ALL ready for the ride …