NO ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE, I SUPPOSE

There's been an interesting, recurrent conversation at school for the past few weeks about the line between taste and quality. It's sort of understood (or agreed upon) that there is a vague bar for a piece being 'of quality'--meaning, in theatre school language, specific, well-framed, well thought-out, interesting, curious, etc. But the whole point of going to the theatre is to leave with a radically personal experience, right? ANNNNNND it's also "sort of understood" that not everyone likes the same things. So when you get to a certain point in a viewing experience where you can respect or appreciate something's essential 'goodness' without actually liking it or relating to it in any real way, is this just a comment on your individuality or the utter uselessness of even having to acknowledge this invisible bar for 'good work'? It makes me think of "The Emperor's New Clothes"--the second a limit is established, doesn't it kind of naturally envelop things around it? Don't people feel pressure to conform in terms of ideas, doesn't their ability to respond truthfully get sucked in? What's the point of rating anything if everyone will just think what they want to, anyways? Elevated language. Heightened stakes. More reasons to avoid the alarming, utter mediocrity of our every endeavor. That said, I think I might agree with whatever I am being a nebulous Devil's Advocate to--bad work can feel like a waste of time, while work I didn't necessarily like but had to concede was 'good' will still usually provoke me into thinking about SOMETHING. But then again, even if you have the fleeting thought that something was a waste of time, isn't that effective on one plane also? Perhaps something to go in the 'Do not ever do this' column of my creative brain? She speaks in circles. The whole thing is actually very interesting.

It struck me in the elevator that Acting and its related sciences--no, let's just say ART--is all about trying to get back to the same mindset of an indiscriminate child with an average capacity for sensory delight. Everything we do is about being curious and making inquiries in roundabout, weird, explosive ways towards life concepts that are simply too difficult to perceive of; only this time, instead of being hindered by lack of experience, we're just struggling awkwardly with the "adult tools" we've been granted--executive functioning, for instance. In Directing, we spent a semester hammering the buzz-concept "Tell me what you saw. This is a story of a person who..." into our brains, only to realize that this is the way we all thought before bigger words started to complicate simple meanings. In writing, I am taught to examine things in opposites, tensions, dialectics--and that simple act of finding contrast is absolutely kid-like. SO the morning clothing routine. I remember being a Bossy 10 year old "theatre company director" and being able to make the rapid-fire decisions I struggle with in the Now-Very-Real-World without reaaaaaaaaallly blinking an eye. The consequences of having to respect people (AS ADULTS. CONFOUND IT!) and realize...I dunno, DEATH suddenly become very Adam and Eve. What a shame, that loss of innocence. Let us all fork out gajillions of dollars towards student loans in attempt to re-learn what we already knew, except this time learn is 'pedagogy.'

Lots of posts seem to be about either boys or Peter Pan complexes...

Speaking of THE FORMER!!!
It's also strange, how you feel different people in different parts of your body. Hiccup motion on the layer of secondary skin right below my collar bone. Edge of my left cheek, a swirling. Definitive CHURNING around the inside of hips. These are all the different ways I feel about the 35 people I love on any given day, and the way they recur and dissapear and flame up has the same medical horror of self-medicating for an ulcer (I have never had an ulcer, this is a simile). It's physical and literal, wanting you. I do.
It has also just become real because I put it into words.
In a perfect world, I would write: if you can't say it on your birthday when can you, eh? I am actually yours (meaning I like you! and want to JUMP YOU!)--name. Everyone disintegrated into giggles. Yet--YET--in this one way, I have not advanced past the seventh grade. The way I wear my clothes, the way I cook my pasta, the face I make when I'm trying to stay awake, the questions I arch towards you like heavy softballs (repeated), the coy seductive way I ask for things, these are different, the way I speak. My stomach-aches. The pills and substances I use to make pain go away. Everything is at least a little...tweaked. Except that seventh grade knot of infrared light that no one can see, that settled like a mass of undigested cheese (gross, self) and started weaving spiderwebs and knots and sending out pulses and wavelengths to the tips of my stretching skin...that's the same. Same stupid clavicle fluttering. Same--beating, blind, bobbling--heart.

If you are sad, go read "Morning" by Frank O'Hara.