MetaJess

1/3: ‘I once read about a man who believed himself to have a fish in his jaw. This fish moved about, and caused him a lot of discomfort. When he tried to tell people about the fish, they thought him ‘crazy’, which led to violent arguments. After he’d been hospitalised...

2/3: ... several times –with not effect on the fish– it was suggested that perhaps he shouldn’t tell anyone. After all it was the quarrels which were getting him put away, rather than the delusion.

3/3: Once he’d agreed to keep his problem secret, he was able to lead a normal life. His sanity is like our sanity. We may not all have a fish in our jaw, but we all have its equivalent.'

‘When I explain that sanity is a matter of interaction, rather than one’s mental processes… the students agree that for years they have been suppressing all sorts of thinking because they classified it as insane.’

‘The truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal.’

'When you act or speak spontaneously, you reveal your real self, as opposed to the self you’ve been trained to present.'

'The brain constructs the universe for us, so how is it possible to be ‘stuck’ for an idea? The student hesitates not because he doesn’t have an idea, but to conceal the inappropriate ones that arrive uninvited.'

‘Reading about spontaneity won’t make you more spontaneous, but it may at least stop you heading off in the wrong direction; and if you play the exercises with your friends in a good spirit, then soon all your thinking will be transformed.’

1/2: ‘The improviser has to understand that his first skill lies in releasing his partner’s imagination. What happens in my classes, if the actors stay with me long enough, is that they learn how their ‘normal’ procedures destroy other people’s talent.

2/2: Then one day they have a flash of satori – they suddenly understand that all the weapons they were using against other people they also use inwardly, against themselves.’

“We don’t know much about Masks in our culture ... because [it] is usually hostile to trance states. We distrust spontaneity and try to replace it by reason.”

“…we don’t realise how much of our lives is spent in some form of trance, i.e. absorbed. What we assume to be ‘normal consciousness’ is comparatively rare, it’s like the light in the refrigerator: when you look in, there you are ON, but what’s happening when you don’t look in?”