Virtue 4: Physicality - The Body Electric - The 12 Virtues of the Primordial Artist

This is the fifth in a series exploring 12 virtues that can liberate artists from cultural enslavement.

ATTEND

The modern human can no longer climb a tree, chase down game, carve a spear, defend their home, build their house. With few exceptions, the modern human has sacrificed their body for convenience. They’ve given up their strength for ease, and their health for pleasure. We’ve been tricked – by fascinating technology and profitable goods – to give up our vitality, our self sufficiency, our very physical selves – in order to participate in the delightful, addictive, endless treadmill of weakening activities, sickening foods, and distracting abstractions.

These are forces often beyond our control. Certainly beyond our power to stop. Convention puts us in harm’s way now. It’s the state of the state of the world. We are looking at an uphill battle, perhaps one that cannot even be waged. We’ve lost our physical selves and the only people who care are trying to sell it back to us.

Our genuine physical delight and power is present in us when we are young, children literally bounce off the walls and shock adults with their stamina and refusal to stop running. The energy seems to come from nowhere (did they even nap today?) it’s as if they are tapped into a reservoir of physical power that we do not see, we do not feel, we do not remember.

My mom is obese. My dad had type 2 diabetes which despite the power to overcome, he simply took medicine and ate ice cream and died of a stubbed toe which never healed and led to an amputation which led to blood clots which led to kidney failure which led to sepsis which led to his death. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, that’s how the doctor glibly put it.

I heard my mom talk about her physicality as a child, her diving, her horse back riding, but I never saw it. I saw her decline over the years I was alive to the point where she is now where she cannot leave her house and breathes with oxygen as a helper.

We avoid our bodies I think because they are complex and start to wear out with bad use. They wear out anyway, with age. But they especially start to “betray” us when we treat them without respect. When we eat whatever we want, when we don’t move them, when we don’t stretch them, when we don’t care when doctors tell us there are numbers that are not looking great.

We’ve given up not just our bodies but our ability to act in space and time. To be somewhere. To stand and deliver. To hit our marks. The more our bodies fail and degrade the less we are able to stand and speak our truths. The less we are able to transmit. To ignore our physicality is to ignore our place and time and reality and specificity and power. There’s some physics equation that proves that power is force and point of contact. As we weaken our point of contact, we weaken our power as artists. And without physicality, we cannot have boundaries, we cannot have self-sufficiency.

ENVISION

In Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman wrote “I sing the body electric.”

I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?”

This is the key to the artists grasp of physicality.

The body is not a tool, but an instrument. The body is not a donkey, but a shining light. The body is our soul incarnate. Our body is our soul made flesh.

There is an enormous opportunity for artists to remember their physicality. To prioritize it. Not from shame or self hatred, no. From love. To love one’s body and to know that one exists, physically, here, now. To relish our physicality, in the form it is now. To sing the body electric.

We feel life. We feel the world. We have visions from the muse / great mysterious and then we must act, here, to make it real. We must do things here, with our bodies, with the physical world, with this world, here now.

Physicality as a virtue – it is saying that physicality IS a virtue – it is a gift – and it is something we must lean into. Physicality is an opportunity – an opportunity to act. To make Real. The physical body is the soul made real. Our works of art are our visions made real – by our hands, by our words and actions. We have the opportunity to walk around and talk and do stuff here on earth today. That is a gift, and physicality in this sense is a virtue.

The body electric means, to me, that this physical body is more than just a body. It is an expressor of divine feelings, impulses. It is our instrument, it is our wand. For dancers and actors is IS their work of art. It is the medium. It is our interface with reality. It is our opportunity. The body can be made transparent to the impulses and forces of Nature.

In some ways I’ve been lucky with my body, in other ways I’ve been unlucky. Both provide avenues of approach to physicality. What comes easily and feels good as well as what comes hard and feels bad. Listen to the body and find the way through. So that you can express lucidly and truthfully and beautifully.

As a young actor the teachers would reflect: where’s your body? You have no body. She has no legs. Like a head on a broomstick. We would get caught in our heads and loose our bodies.

My first year of college I auditioned for the Acting 1 course. The official track for actors in the theater program. I was sure I’d get in. I had acted in high school with leads doing Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde. I auditioned and when I went to the board that showed who made the class, I wasn’t there. I couldn’t believe it. At the bottom was a note from the teacher. “Sorry we couldn’t take everyone. But don’t waste the opportunity: don’t waste the quarter: Take Tandy Beal’s What is Dance? You wont regret it.”

I was furious and embarrassed that I didn’t get in. But on some intuition I signed up for the dance class and showed up. And it blew my mind.

Tandy Beal was a dancer. She was also the founder of the Pickle Family Circus. She had a broad concept of theater and dance and movement that spanned across art and the human condition. I still think about that class regularly. It was a class mostly of non-dancers. Only a handful had dance training and they were the only ones who knew who Tandy Beal was. The rest of us were just college kids who were curious about that question. What is dance? It was my first truly transformational college class because it was opening up a new topic in a curious way and with a group of people that might never have been together. It wasn’t a bunch of film nerds in a film class about the western or production techniques. It was literally asking a question with genuine curiosity, and we were there asking too. What is physicality?

Let’s take a look at Physicality as the 4th virtue and how it relates to the others. Physicality serves several key functions in the virtue progression.

It serves as a reality check. With our foundation in love, we have a spiritual abundance to act from. Now we must face reality as it is. Our strengths and our limitations with our bodies and our skills. We must apply ourselves over time to make impact.

The body and physicality is also a power source or perhaps more accurately a transformer – it allows us to draw energy from the great mysterious and manifest it here in the physical realm.

The body is an integration point. This is where the virtues before and those that follow will need to express themselves. Here in the physical world. Here with these objects that surround you, with these assets and these liabilities. The body is where love becomes manifest. The body is where love can become holding hands, can become a kiss, can become an embrace, can become sitting together. This actualization of the abstract is crucial for art. We must make the transcendent real. Art is this and beyond this. Physicality makes this possible.

The body and physicality in this sense transcend vanity or health obsession and becomes spiritual responsibility – to maintain our physical strength so that our artistic expression can flourish.

And physicality – in our bodies, in our tools, in our space – is existential. It is to do with our survival, our existence, our place in the world. Physicality cannot be ignored, it must be embraced and worked with. As artists we must envision, but we must also make real.

DIRECT

Solo

Body centers (Chekhov)

Imagine a golden ball in the center of your chest. Feel its warmth. Let it lead your movements.
Variation: move the ball to different parts of your body.

Integration: How is it to be lead by something other than your mind? What characteristics come out with different centers? How is expression different, how is feeling different?

Sense of ease (Chekhov)

Walk around the room normally. Allow a sense of ease to enter your body, particularly start with your arms. Allow them to rise as if they were lighter than air. Allow them to gesture and flow. Let the sense of ease permeate more of your body. Let it affect the way you are moving, let it move your trunk, your legs, let it permeate your whole being.

Integration: How is it to feel lightness in your body? Does it feel different from normal? How are the expressions generated, are you controlling them?

Tune the piano

Go through a physical stretching routine. Use it as an opportunity to listen to the body. To attend to it. Spend more time stretching where your body asks you too. Approach your body with curiosity. Is there something the routine is missing? Is there something the body wants to do, needs to do?
Note: The routine you develop or choose should be able to make contact with the whole body and be scaled so as to gently reach your capacity boundary, not break it. For my practice I’ve found 90 seconds is the best duration for each stretch to maintain my flexibility. 120 seconds develops flexibility, less than 90 in case I just don’t have time that day. They whole tuning process takes me 45 minutes.
Integration: How is it to listen to your body as you “tune” it? Is it diffrent from other workout activities for you?

I love you, my body (or I love you my knee)

Use your hand and place it on a part of your body with care. “I love you my knee. Thank you, I appreciate you.” Feel the warmth of your hand, feel the warmth of love on your knee, feel the gratitude for the amazing things your knee does for you.
Note: This applies to our injured parts as well. They need love just as much, if not more.
Integration: How does it feel to specifically connect with parts of your body and express love like this? How does that part feel afterward? How is this different from how you might usually treat that part of your body?

Aerobic extension

Find an activity that raises your heart-rate and makes you sweat a little. Be careful of your joints and any vulnerable parts of yourself. It may take some trial and error. It might be biking or swimming, dancing or walking fast. Work your way up to doing the activity for more than 30 minutes – as much as 90. This will take time, perahps weeks or months, be patient.
Integration How does it feel during the aerobic activity? Now after you’ve built up? How does it feel after? How does it feel two hours after?

Resistance strength

Note: Find a trainer. Resistance strength is where we can injure our bodies. Be careful.
Find a way to develop strength through resistance. Examples include weight lifting, Pilates. Be patient and slow in your progression. If possible find a compassionate trainer to help you develop your practice. This too will take time and developing the correct form is paramount. Adding weight can always come later, much later. Find the form. The form of a squad. The form of a bench press is crucial, mandatory.
Integration: How does your body feel when you do resistance strength? How do you feel later in the day? Later in the week?

Energy extension

Sit calmly and feel your energy in your body. Take a breath into your belly and allow the energy to move out ahead of you a few feet. And then come back. Take another breath in and allow it to go farther out. Allow your energy to grow in your body, to make the aurora larger, stronger. Let it permeate your muscles. Let it breathe with your breath.

Integration: How is it to feel your energy get larger? Is it difficult, is it easy? How do you feel afterward?

Pairs

Energy dance

Stand facing your partner. One person spontaneously will begin a gesture. The other mirrors it, feels it. This is not simple mimicry, this is to feel the energy difference associated with the gesture. And to allow the mirror to strengthen and amplify the energy change. Once a gesture has completed it self, the other person makes a gesture or movement. It will naturally be informed by the prior, don’t fight the prior or try to cut it off. These gestures will naturally be building off of each other into a kind of dance. Continue alternating. After some number, begin to reincorporate the gestures from before. Either party can incorporate a gesture, they belong to you both now.

Integration: How is it to accept a gesture of the other and build on it, not just superficially but energetically? How is it to begin to build a language together? How was it when the gestures stated to reincorporate?

Mover

With consent, one person will be neutral, the other person will move them. When the other person moves them, they are moving them as a willing model – the neutral person will take the cues from the way they are being moved and build into the movement, build into the gesture, actively. The mover will need to control less and less and simple gestures will send the neutral one into a increasingly developed movement. And then the neutral one will come to a natural rest. And the mover will rejoin them.
Advanced. The Mover is farther away, not touching them physically, yet still moving them, and then farther still.
Switch roles.
Integration: How is it to be moved? Is it frightening? Is it liberating? Mover, how is it to move someone? Does it feel dominating, emboldening?
Note: The mover, when the exercise is going well, will be offering gestures and movements they sense the neutral one wants to make – they will be listening to their own body, but also listening to the neutral one.

Group

Kinetic dance

First the group will walk purposely ignoring each other and often bumping awkwardly into each other, insisting on their own path. Then after a reset, the group will be very aware of their own bodies and energy, and very aware of the others bodies and energy. There will be a sense of curiosity, of care, of wonder, of play. There can be closeness (consent) and distance. This will be a dance that develops and evolves. If it is static, the participants are not being transparent enough.
Note: Love from the prior virtues is very valuable here, as this is essentially also a love sea exercise.
Integration: How is it to be really aware of others and their energies? How is it to move with the energies rather than bulldoze?

Notes: There is a wealth of valuable work that others have done on the body. I’ll list my favorites in the appendix. You will be able to find your favorites by approaching it through the primordial lens: what helps me connect to the transcendent through my body better?

Animal Warriors

Explore warrior animals: tiger, wolf, eagle, bear, snake
Each animal teaches different aspects of power
Tiger: focused intensity and patience
Wolf: pack leadership and loyalty
Eagle: perspective and precision
Bear: protective strength and boundaries
Snake: flexibility and striking power
Interact with others while maintaining animal essence
Instruction: “Each animal holds a different teaching about power. Let them school you.”
Integration: How is it to channel animal energies? Animal wisdoms? Which of these animals do you need most now?

CURTAIN

The physical body is an opportunity – it is a fulcrum, it is the tip of the spear, it is the way in which we make the dream real. It is our instrument on earth as artists, to transmit the mystery that we commune with – to transmit it back here, to “real life”. Physicality is a transcendent instrument of expression. And it is our responsibility to maintain our strength, our flexibility, our boundaries, and our care for our bodies in order to make our work more powerful, more beautiful, more clear.

If we ignore our bodies and allow them to become sick, if we ignore our homes and our theaters and our brushes and our workspaces and allow them to fall into disrepair – they become prisons. We limit ourselves and we imprison ourselves when we deny our physicality and the work that physicality requires.

And, our bodies are the point at which all of the virtues converge and act in reality. The body is our instrument – the instrument of the primordial artist.

Next week we’ll explore how Physicality serves as a basis for Virtue 5: Courage.