Virtue 6: Alternation - Lead and Follow - The 12 Virtues of the Primordial Artist

This is the seventh in a series on how 12 virtues can liberate artists from cultural enslavement.

ATTEND

Our egos are terrified of loosing ground. If we get a decent spot in the hierarchy, we fight to keep it. We dig in. Ideally we go up incrementally. Jump to find an opportunity to rise. Better car, better clothes, better partner, better position. We either want to lead, or we want to stay at our level, never drop. Our egos are obsessed with a predictable hierarchy, and ideally, one in which we are on top (or near). Campbell called the tyrant figure in his meta-myth Holdfast. Holdfast is that one who refuses to let go, refuses to relinquish, refuses to move up and down, down and up on the see saw of life, the waves of fortune, the cycles of seasons, the day and night. Holdfast has lost their relationship with the divine, with the primordial flow, and has become fixed in ego rigidity, a false attachment to things that should never be fixed. They insist on remaining the same despite all the signals that say that they must change.

We artists are not immune to these traps. We can become fixed in our image of ourselves, fixed in our desire to lead, desire for fame, desire for status, desire for wealth. What if we get some success, what if we direct a good play, what if we get a lead, get a good commission. Can we back down? Can we support a collaborator? Can we be humble without fearing we will loose our “rightful status?”

I’ve spent a long time playing high status – trying to establish myself a director, strong, decisive, clear. I’ve found that people respond to it, and I like being known that way. When I’ve gone to workshops as a student – particularly Status workshops – my struggle is to embrace low status roles. I find myself believing I am playing low status only to be told by the class and by the teacher that I appeared high status. My own Holdfast seems to want to keep me on the high side.

ENVISION

Alternation is the spiritual act or ability to change. In the simplest sense it is the ability to lead and then to follow. To be able to do either, to do both, to do them simultaneously. To see the value of this and to embrace it, and to be able to choose the appropriate way as the situation requires – as the mission requires – this is the virtue.

Alternation is a key discernment point in the artists path. Courage and physicality give the artist power, and love gives them abundance. Alternation becomes they way the artist chooses to act rightly. Appropriately to the situation. When to lead strongly, when to watch and listen. When to cover and support, when to lead by example, to be out front.

Alternation is the antidote to the tyrant/slave dynamic in human hierarchies. It enables the artist to see the patterns, and transcend their hold. The artist can choose with freedom and accuracy what way will serve the mission best.

In a US Army fire team, there are two elements: A base of fire and a bounding element. They both have four members, and they both have the same weapons and equipment. But in the tactical moment, they serve opposite and complementary functions. The base of fire covers the movement of the bounding element. They watch their flanks, watch their backs, send fixing fire on the enemy positions and enable to bold actions of the bounding element. The Bounding element is the bold one, the vulnerable one, moving, taking risks, out in the open, very much at risk. They become the decisive element because they can actually finish the engagement by assaulting through the objective. There’s a saying: To have base of fire without bounding is indecisive. To have bounding without base of fire is suicide.

The two elements complement each other perfectly and powerfully. Neither can complete the task without the other. And alternation is the ability to change back and forth between the different elements. Sometimes we are the leader, taking point, bounding out into the open, making in the decisive move. Other times we are the base of fire – covering our fellows, shaping the situation in order for them to move, them to act, them to succeed. The wisdom to choose the right role according to the mission is the key to Alternation.

And what is the mission? For artists, the mission is the divine task that we’ve received. The mysterious work that we need to enact, that we need to make real. That is our higher purpose, and that is what will shape our successive decisions.

Base of Fire = The supporting role
• Holding space for another’s creative risk-taking
• Providing steady encouragement, feedback, or resources
• Maintaining the container while someone else explores vulnerability
• Being the reliable foundation that allows breakthrough

Bounding Element = The advancing role
• Taking creative risks while supported
• Leading a project or creative vision
• Being vulnerable in performance or sharing work
• Moving toward the unknown while others provide stability

The Alternation Wisdom:
• Both roles are equally valuable and necessary
• The situation determines who should advance and who should provide cover
• Ego wants to always be the bounding element (the “star”), but wisdom knows when to be base of fire
• Teams fail when everyone tries to advance simultaneously or everyone stays in support

The metaphor of the fire team is directly applicable to artistic collaboration. We as artists must be able to be flexible in our roles as we carry out our work. Whether we are working alone (clean the brushes, prime the canvas) or in writers rooms (punch up the script, develop the story-line) or in a band (provide that solid rhythm section, let that solo fly) we must be able to support as lovingly as we lead (take the solo, paint the subject, take center stage). If we get caught up in our own egos we will be strangling out the connection to the divine. So instead, remain flexible, collaborative, and alternating.

Interestingly, Alternation of role also includes alternation of responsibility – the ability to see what is your responsibility and what is not in the role you are in in the service to the divine vision.

Base of fire: responsible for the safety of the bounding element. Making a container for them. Not responsible for their overall success in assaulting through.

Bounding element: Responsible for tactical maneuver to a vulnerable flank. For boldly and effectively assaulting through the objective. Not responsible for securing the flanks, fixing the enemy with suppressive fire, preventing their escape.

Director: responsible for the vision, the container, the direction. I’m not responsible for whether the actors like the direction.

Actor: responsible for their preparation, their vulnerability, their courageous action. Not responsible for the director’s mood or the audience’s reaction.

Collaborator: Responsible for supporting this persons’ creative risk. Not responsible for their breakthrough or lack thereof.

This helps keep artists free because we are not carrying unnecessary weight of responsibility (trying to control everything), nor are we shirking responsibility that is for us to hold (it’s not my job).

This helps modulate responsibility intelligently to avoid either tyrant (all controlling) or victim/slave (no power).

Examples of artist responsibility:

Appropriate Responsibility (What Artists SHOULD Own):
• Showing up fully to their creative work
• Being honest in their artistic expression
• Developing their craft and skills
• Following their authentic creative impulses
• Taking the lead when their vision/expertise is needed
• Supporting others when that serves the work
• Making bold creative choices
• Being vulnerable and truthful in their art

Inappropriate Responsibility (What Enslaves Artists):
• Whether people like their work
• Box office numbers or commercial success
• Others’ emotional reactions to their choices
• Making everyone comfortable
• Controlling how their work is received
• Managing others’ careers or creative journeys
• Fixing other people’s problems
• Guaranteeing specific outcomes

When artists take only appropriate responsibility, they’re free to:
• Follow their authentic creative impulses
• Take risks without attachment to results
• Lead when called to lead, follow when called to follow
• Serve the work itself rather than human expectations
• Channel divine creativity without fear of human judgment

Integration: Does this appeal to you? Is there more or less that should be included here?

Keith Johnstone developed and did deep work in what he called “Status” – the relative status of two people and how it reveals deep hierarchical struggles in the human race. Like birds or wolves, human beings get caught up in status games in order to gain power, position, safety, mates. When unconscious and unchecked, status play can be extremely toxic and ego based, cutting off human beings from a relation ship to the divine, because there’s always a human boss at the top of the ladder. And if you aren’t listening to him, you’re trying to be him. It also of course risks turning human beings into masters and slaves.

The power of Johnstone’s insights is that it pulls back the curtain on these ego driven status processes and allows the artist to see them, to understand, to not be caught in them, and to utilize them in service of their mission.

Does the mission call for me to lead? To be bold now? To follow? To support my collaborators?

In the military, a squad leader might seem like the troopers boss. They tell the troopers what to do what to carry, where to go, how fast to move. But the squad leader, while leading the troops, is following the platoon leader. The platoon leader is responsible for four squads, and is leading them to accomplish an objective a single squad could never do. that platoon leader is the boss of all those squad leaders, and the squad leaders follow the platoon leaders direction. But the platoon leader also has a boss. The platoon leader follows the company commander. The company commander is responsible not just for one platoon, but for two or three or four platoons. The company commander is able to orchestrate operations that the platoon leader could never do because of the scale of terrain and of the size and strength of the enemy. The Company commander is able to set objectives and coordinate forces and resources on a scale that the platoon leader simply does not have access to. And guess what, the Company commander has a boss.

The power of the military system of hierarchy is that each leader is also a follower. Simultaneous to their actions of leading, they are following a higher intent. Mission Command is an idea in the us military that states that by giving the leader a mission, not just a task, they can work in a better coordination than you as their leader could ever control.

The military hierarchy is a model of structure for carrying out a mission. It is a virtuous hierarchy based on alternation if the leaders are developing their subordinates in order to further the mission. It is not working if the leaders are using their role to support and bolster their own ego (tyrant, Holdfast).

A mission is defined as this: A task plus a purpose.

Your task – seize hill 249.
The purpose – to enable the control of Foster Valley and Routes Able and Baker.

Once you realize that your mission is to seize hill 249 in order to control Foster Valley and Routes Able and Baker, you can act with more intelligence and integration than simple robotic action. You are not simply taking a hill and then sitting on your hands, You can keep the next purpose in mind as you act, if you see an opportunity tor reach the higher purpose better or faster, you can use disciplined initiative and do it. You can act with agency beyond the limits of the immediate small task and remain integrated with the higher purpose. You are taking the hill in order to control the valley and the supply routes, which is the higher purpose. You’re leading and following at the same time.

You have the flexibility to lead confidently and at the same time be obedient to the purpose above you. This is an important skill, and a key virtue to acting as an individual while also being connected to something higher. To have agency and to have purpose.

As artists, our higher purpose does not come from a platoon leader or a company commander, it comes from the great mysterious. It comes from the primordial source of all creativity. It comes from our direct communion with realty itself. And our immediate tasks, preparing the canvas, warming up our voice, stretching, returning to the blank page – are in support of the higher purpose coming to us from god. We are able to lead – in a collaboration or in our own work – and yet follow the impulses we receive from the mystery.

We can build our own mission command structure, our own commanders intent.

Our purpose: why we’re doing any of this
Our method: how we will contribute to this purpose, what will be our way? What things will we do?
End state: What we want the world to look like after we’ve done our work.
Key tasks: What must be done?
Acceptable risk: What is ok to risk? What is it. not ok to risk? What are our constraints?

By creating a hierarchy of Purpose, Method (Operations, key tasks, end state), we have a mission that we can reference in order to align our tactics, our leading, our following, our boldness, our support.

Alternation is also the ability to embrace opposites and complements. To support, and then to take point. To be soft, and then to be hard. To listen, and then to speak. To watch, and then to act. To embrace that both will complement each other. To embrace the complementary nature.

Alternation is visualized perfectly in the Universal Energy symbol from Tai Chi: The Yin and Yang. This essentially Taoist symbol demonstrates the essential balance that exists in nature between light and dark, strong and mild, smooth and rough, active and passive. While there is a larger total oneness, the ability To see and embrace and utilize the alternation of opposites is very much a part of being a mortal being, to being incarnate, to being alive.

We wake, we sleep. We act, we reflect. We learn, we do. We stand, we sit. We are cheerleaders, we are players. We are coaches, we are champions.

The specifics are infinite. The principal remains: find out where you are fixed and experiment with alternation. See how you can work with your self and work with your fellows to make a whole that is greater than the parts. By embracing the alternation, we as artists create work that exceed their own bounds.

By embracing alternation, the artist can also avoid the pitfalls of the tyrant or the slave. By refusing to remain fixed in either or any role, we are able to maintain flexibility, fluidity, and freedom. We remain humble in our following, we remain courageous in our leading.

Furthermore, by following the great mysterious, we are not available to tyrannical enslavement by human beings. We simply have another master to serve.

I worked at an electronics shop in Brooklyn when I was in New York forging my way as an actor and director. The boss was charismatic, intelligent, a powerful guy, a kind of older brother we all looked up to. He was successful, confident, and demanding. Myself and the rest of the young guys who worked there did essentially anything he asked, including staying all night once a quarter to do an inventory count. When I was getting ready to leave New York, I was looking for a replacement for my role as inventory manager. There was a new guy who was just really smart, really virtuous, clearly the right candidate. I met him outside of work and asked him about it, talked to him about the better pay, the satisfaction of mastering the inventory system, he said, “No thanks.” I was surprised and asked why. He said we all look to the boss as a kind of demigod. We follow him without question. We do whatever he asks. He said he doesn’t follow any human being like that, he only follows god like that. He doesn’t have room in his life for a human master.

This conversation had a profound effect on me, and has been one I’ve thought of many times since. “No man is my master.”

DIRECT

Pairs

Leading and Following

A will being leading, B follows. Whatever A does, B simply follows faithfully. Movement, attitude, speech. Purpose. It can be sincere, it can be funny, but it must be real following.
Switch roles.
Integration: What does it feel like to have someone follow you? What does it feel like to give up control and follow faithfully?

You’re fired

Begin in one status (high relative or low relative), during the scene gradually transition to the other
Integration: How is it to slowly grade the status change? Were you able to keep the scene realistic?

Group

Status ladder – roommates

Each person chooses a number privately 1,2,3,4. They play a scene where a new roommate is coming to see the place. Fight for your Number.
Integration: How is it to be the number you chose? Did you have to fight someone else to keep the number? How did it affect the way you interacted?

Office Picnic

Using a deck of cards, the facilitator gives a card face down to each person. At once, they all raise their cards to their own forehead (they do not see their own card, but everyone else does). Improvise the picnic, talk about the year, express appreciation, flirt, etc. At the close everyone lines up for a company picture (in order of hierarchy). The group self organizes.
Integration: How did you know what status you were designated with? Did yo fight it? Did you go with it? How did yo treat those with “low” status? “High” status? How much did it it change your behavior to interact with them?

CURTAIN

Alternation allows us to choose the right action for the right time. We as artists can keep our actions aligned to our mission, to the service to the great mysterious. And we can keep from being entangled in the status ladder of human society. We can remain free, flexible, collaborative, able to lead, able to follow, able to be bold, able to support each other. Holdfast is part of the human condition – the ego will want to grab on and keep itself steady, growing, fixing. As artists and as servants of the great mysterious, part of our practice is to keep alternating, keep flexible, keep dynamic, keep free.

Next week we’ll look at the culmination of these three virtues, the second archetype: the Warrior.