All the world’s a stage…

I once saw an empty doorframe, standing upright on a beach.

A few years ago, in what for me were the bad old days, I was walking along a beach just before dawn. It was a pebble beach, not sand, and kind of near town but still a bit out of the way. It was on my way home, though, and that’s where I was going. I’d spent the night out with friends: drinking, partying, talking about all kinds of stuff, and – this being a cold autumn – occasionally hiding out in public shelters to avoid the rain showers, and singing hymns because the signs on the wall said HYMN SINGING ON SUNDAYS.

So anyway, I got tired and decided to go home and, as I said, I had to walk along this beach to get home. There was nobody else anywhere nearby, this being 4 or 5 in the morning and all, and there was that eerie, otherworldy feeling you get when there’s no sound at all except the breakers and the hissing of the water pulling back through the rocks and your head’s full of silence and hymns. And, behold, there was this doorframe, standing upright and empty, in the middle of the beach and facing the waves and the great wide horizon.

If I had stepped through it, would I have been in the same place? If I was in the same place, would I have been the same person? I don’t know. I didn’t step through it. These are questions worth asking, though. They’re worth asking, because a doorway in the midst of wilderness taps deeply into our sense of myth, and draws upon our millenia as a species of asking questions about what on earth is really going on here. It doesn’t belong – but why not, and why is it there? If it’s here, maybe it’s for a reason. Maybe it hasn’t just been washed up by the sea and put upright by who knows who. Because our reality is artificial and constricted. William Gibson described cyberspace as “a consensual hallucination” but the description is just as apt for “the real world”… whatever that is. It’s a liminal experience.

A solitary doorway on the tideline challenges the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and about the world we live in. We act according to unconscious streams of thought, and sometimes we encounter something that resonates, and we feel compelled to act without really knowing why.

That’s why I feel that I need to take, ahem, acting classes. I’ve known for a long time that very little is real – or, at least, as real as we like to think it is. Like all of us, I have several narrative versions of who I am; some are mutually incompatible, but they are all true, none the less. (I put it down to reading Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius quartet at a young age).

Where do these stories come from, and what lies underneath? Studying baguazhang and taijiquan has helped, and is helping, to discipline and understand my body and, through the body, my mind. Studying Buddhism and meditation helps me to understand the mind and, through the mind, my body.  What’s lacking is a way of systematically examining the ways in which I interpret myself to the world, and the ways and means I employ to sway and motivate other people.  Seeing an advert for acting classes has triggered a response: I think this could be a really useful experience in terms of personal development and give me insight tools that I’m lacking(and, to be clear, my less-spiritual MBA self also sees advantages).  What do you think? Details are here.