Today's improvisation is a memory. For several years
in my 20s, I took workshops in depth psychologist Ira Progoff’s “Intensive
Journal Method,” and kept a journal accordingly. What I got from this practice
and my brief interactions with Dr. Progoff himself was a more flexible perspective
on time in life, and an understanding that “selves” or "identities" are stories that
we tell ourselves. One of the basic tasks of this journal
method is to periodically draw up a list of major life events in order to
divide a life into periods. As you return to repeat the exercise over time, your markers
of major periods will change with your changing perspective on your past. These lists of “Stepping Stones” as Dr. Progoff
called them, become revealing in comparison, providing yet another perspective viewpoint especially after many years have
passed.
My interests in drama and history led me
to focus on the Dialogic aspects of the Intensive Journal. Writing out someone
else’s “stepping stones” is the first step in having a dialogue with someone
who is dead or no longer present. With the exception of considering an “entire
lifetime”, this exercise was almost identical to one I had done in actor
training as a Drama student, and I was keen on learning what I could from it. When
Dr. Progoff came to the west coast to lead a workshop on writing dialogues with
historical figures I somehow enrolled and showed up despite my general
flakiness at the time. The historical figure I chose, Beethoven, had overcome a
serious handicap to produce his greatest works, and this seemed an inspiring
choice. In preparation for the workshop I read the standard biographies and a
LOT of other books about Beethoven. At the workshop itself, I constructed a
narrative of my subject’s life before trying to enter into imaginary dialogue
with him. Everyone at the workshop was in the same stage of the process with
their chosen figure. There is something uniquely serene about the atmosphere
created when forty or fifty people are writing and meditating quietly in the
same room with similar purpose.
At lunch there was a "silent table" where
you could eat if you didn’t want to talk to anyone before returning to the
work. I sat there one day across from a bright-eyed elderly woman. I was in my
20s so I don’t really know how old she was, probably my age now! She
acknowledged me and though we both kept silent, I felt that I had not been
alone at lunch. The next day I saw her at a “talking table” and sat near her.
She had heard me read aloud from my dialogues with Ludwig, but I didn’t know who
her subject was.
“Saint Dominic.” She
answered. “I’m a Dominican nun. I need to talk to him about some things.” I laughed and knew I had found a friend at the
workshop.
Later that day, one of Dr. Progoff’s
assistants asked me if I was interested in becoming a workshop leader. I said, “I
think so, I’m not sure.” She told me that Dr. Progoff would meet with me for a
talk and stroll in the garden at a certain time and that I could ask him
whatever questions I had. The workshop was held in a Catholic Retreat center on
the peninsula, in Redwood City. Redwood City has an archway over its “downtown
entrance” that reads “CLIMATE BEST BY GOVERNMENT TEST.” It was true. Dr.
Progoff and I walked through an idyllic garden in glorious weather. He said I
had a “flair” for the work. I said “I have a care for it,” trying to be clever
and modest and just feeling awkward and phony as soon as I said it. Luckily, he was wise and dismissed it as
nervousness. We talked about my Beethoven project, and I asked him about being
a workshop leader in an official status and admitted that I was not sure I was
mature enough yet to do it. He said, “Well, that tells me that you probably
are.” I didn’t go on to lead any Intensive Journal workshops, but I felt I had achieved something by
being asked.
My dialogues with Beethoven felt
real in many ways- --first, in that he was reticent and resisted talking with me at all. When I
asked him questions about his relationship with his sister-in-law and her son
Karl, his nephew, he lost his temper with me. Beethoven accused me of
judging him when I had no real knowledge of the situation. I apologized and
asked him about how he overcame his depression when he knew he would soon be
deaf. The answers that I wrote for him
were things I had learned by reading his “Helinginstadt Testament,” essentially
a suicide note in which he talks himself out of committing suicide. I thought that I chose Beethoven because I
admired the music that he created despite his deafness, but what I learned from
the workshop was that his life had more to teach me than I could absorb in a
few days of intensive writing and meditating. I didn't consciously realize it at the time, but I was looking for a way to be productive despite my own depression, which
when I felt normal or hypomanic was something I tended to compartmentalize and deny. Beethoven was forced to
confront the loss of his reason for living when he went deaf. He would miss performing and it would be
frustrating trying to teach others to correctly play the music he would write.
Then it occurred to him that not hearing the noise of the outside world (or bad
music) might be liberating, and more importantly that “the music he would write”
would not exist at all if he did not live to complete it. My dialogue with Beethoven produced a wealth
of insights that continue to this day, not the least of which is the importance of finding the
work that wouldn’t be done if you didn’t do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment