Drink the Electric Kool-Aid Part II

I've finished reading Wolfe's “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, and I've made a few more observations. While we're on the subject, you recall in Part I that I could only guess that maybe Del Close and Kesey may have knew each other, as they were both interested in drugs for enlightenment and living in the same area at the same time, well, I've found the proof. Near the end of the book, a reporter goes to an Acid Test and sees Close and Severn Darden at the event (doing what else, but improvising some scenes right in the middle of the party), of course at the time Kesey was hiding out in Mexico, so no direct line just yet. But what I was struck with was Kesey's final lesson to the Merry Pranksters (and all drug users really), that doing all these psychotropics was cool and all in that it gave man a way to really dive into himself, but in the end, we had to figure out a way to get there without the drugs.

The Acid Tests really were this, an attempt to reproduce the introspection you get from LSD without having to take it (except for one party where someone actually did spike the punch with acid, but then again, they weren't call the Pranksters for nothing). They would play the weird music, do light shows, the whole shebang, trying to mimic the experience. I have to think Del probably made the same connection – while the kind of crazy, off the wall spiritual experience you got while doing LSD was awesome, you couldn't really do scenes or relate to any audience while you're on it, so the next obvious step was trying to bottle that lightning in a way that you could use it on stage. A lot of the early Close Harold openings were based around this concept (including the “3 Rituals” and the “Invocation” - still used today), and Close even said that he loved it more when audiences gave the most mundane suggestions, because that really gave them the opportunity to wow them by elevating something bland into something extraordinary, or even God-like. The Beatniks (who preceded the Hippies in drug use by a decade) discovered this too. The Beat culture was addicted to Benzedrine and Dexedrine (amphetamines for those of you following at home) instead of LSD and DMT, and they were doing it for different purposes (artistic productivity, including writing for the Beats, while the Hippies used it for spiritual exploration), but they reached the same conclusion. Eventually, you have to figure out a way to capture that without taking pharma. (This is compounded by the fact that it requires increased doses for amphetamine, some individuals pushing as high as several hundred milligrams and eventually toxifying themselves to hospitalization or worse. Ah, the pursuit of artistic endeavor.)

I taught a Harold workshop recently to a group that is relatively inexperienced in longform (though they have been experimenting with a very Commedia del Arte approach to it in the last couple of months, and that's pretty cool). The director asked me to teach some longform, and said I could teach whatever I wanted, and after a great deal of internal debate I settled on the Harold for its simplicity of structure, it's influence on other, more complicated forms, and also because every other longform player I know of started on the Harold, so it seems a good place to start. The biggest lesson I learned teaching this two and half hour crash course, is that you can teach the structure relatively easy, but that's only really half of what the Harold (and by extension, Longform) is about. The other half has to do with that paragraph right up there (go ahead and read it again, I'll wait). The other half is largely what I think Close contributed to improv – it's the attitude: everything from the “Theater of the Heart” all the way up to artistic integrity (e.g. play to the top of your character's intelligence/integrity). And it's this way of thinking that would explain why exactly it is that when my first group back in college tried Harold's (twice) that we failed miserably. We were missing that piece of the puzzle that makes longform different from shortform, and what makes longform more than just “longer scenes” but transforms it into something mind-blowing. In a post crash course sit down with the group I taught, one of the players said she didn't like the Harold because it seemed too chaotic; which she was right about, but the Harold I can teach in two hours, sure. What I can't teach in two hours is the mindset of how a longform improviser approaches a piece. This is one of the reasons why the big three cities holds a tight hold on “good” longform – they have the right mindset. Running all the way from Kesey to Close and up to every improviser performing longform today (or at least the ones who can trace their improv lineage back to the original drug users) runs a line that has to do with artistic integrity, discovery, and group mind. This is what makes a longform improviser – not the form he does.

On a personal note, my group is chomping at the bit for some longform, but I don't want to drop that on them until they've attached themselves into that lineage. Once they have, the Harold will be easier than breathing.

Drink the Electric Kool Aid

I’m currently reading a book called “The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test”, by Tom Wolfe, and I feel it’s a happy coincidence that I’m reading it on the tail end of reading “Lamb or The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal”. (It should probably be noted at this point that I am, in fact, a heathen.) I say happy coincidence, because the two texts echo each other in the search for a certain divine thread that holds the whole of life in the universe together. “Electric” is all about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, who, during the sixties were at the forefront of the psychotropic movement. They lived in a little communal in La Honda, CA and spent their time doing extraordinary amounts of LSD, DMT (DMT is extreme psychotropic by anyone’s standards. To reference the book, LSD is like “taking a long journey”, whereas DMT is like “being shot out of a cannon), amphetamines, weed, and any other pharmaceutical they could get their hands on and chanting, meditating, and being their way to some sort of consciousness. “Lamb” on the other hand, is a comical telling of the 18 years in Christ’s life that are left out of the Bible, as seen by his best friend, Biff. Christ makes his way through Afghanistan, China, and India, talking to various holy and spiritual men trying to understand the nature of being. Whereas the Pranksters would have probably just taken some acid spiked O.J., Christ explores it through meditation.

Now, I say again happy coincidence because both books are concerned with the concept of breaking through our own mental, physical, and metaphysical barriers that limit our view of the world and make us petty, spiteful, greedy creatures and trying to push beyond into a grand consciousness. Certainly Christ wasn’t interested in improv games, but the Merry Pranksters constantly pushed each other over the limits, trying to achieve in-the-moment-ness and group mind. They would even play “ball games” (as in passing focus by passing a ball and trying to keep the game constantly going so that everyone was always on their toes) and free associations. It should be pointed out that Del Close was known to be a heavy experimenter with drugs (notably Heroin and Amphetamines), but that probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with his philosophy towards improv (and art in general, I suppose).

He was interested in psychotropics as a road towards opening the mind – unlock that brain with some drugs, and watch the grand splendor of the doors of perception being whipped open with the force of unimpeded imagination flowing forth like a typhoon (think about that metaphor, drug heads). It’s worth noting too, that around the same time the Merry Pranksters were gliding around the forests in Nor Cal drugged out of their gourds humming to each other, Del was less than an hour away in San Francisco formulating the basis of his entire approach to improv. (That most of the acting “elders” at the time resisted his arguably new approach exactly mirrors the same thing Kesey et al were going through should also come as no surprise.) I’m now not sure who developed the ideas first, because they expounded the same basic philosophy: group mind, treat your fellows with respect, honor their ideas, live in the moment, be emotionally open, and don’t apologize for a character being who he is. (Can’t find any mention of Kesey ever knowing Close, so I’m forced to draw this radical new thread on my own.)

(I do want to point out that I don’t propose drug use as a method to unlock your improv potential; quite the contrary – other than some sporadic (though occasionally heavy and sporadic) pot use, I find that the majority of improvisers are quite clean cut.)

One of the sections I liked quite a lot has to do with what the improvisers all call “living in the moment”. This is important because this concept echoes through Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, and what athletes call “the Zone”. Kesey explains that the fastest someone can hope to react is 1/30 of a second, and even then only if they are running at their utmost potential. Even with someone reacting as fast as possible, we’re still reacting to a movie of what went on in front of us 1/30 of a second ago. I list this as important because since leaving Chicago, I can’t recall a single person talking about living in the moment, and not planning ahead; something that was drilled into us constantly. (I also haven’t heard anyone use the idea of “group mind”, but this may be just because I’m out in the hinterlands now.)

And here, dear intrepid explorers of the mind, is where I bring it back to improvisation. We’re working on a game right now called Good Advice, Bad Advice (some Monkeys may recognize it better as the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, with the primary difference being the addition of a characterization to each seat). Game works like this: people from the audience ask questions, a panel of experts in turn gives them back good, bad, and worst advice to the question. I say working on this game, because I have yet to see it consistently work. Even a small, decidedly unscientific poll among my improv friends have turned up but 3 recallable instances of even one seat working. The problem, I feel, is in the moment. This game suffers from affording players too much time to think. This game (especially with the addition of characters) slugs along, with each seat trying to come up with something funny to say. When it’s played, these people are way behind the 1/30 of second mark. They’re, like, living in yesterday (man). I feel like most of the scenes I watch that don’t function right is because the scene isn’t moving along fast enough to keep the improvisers engrossed (or maybe their drug addled brains are wandering off), so they start thinking. And thinking. And planning ahead. And reacting slower, and slower.

Now I can’t quite get completely behind the Pranksters in everything they were expounding (their commune sounds like living in a gulag, only with fewer functioning toilets), but I’ve got to feel like they were on to something. (It may also hurt improv that most improvisers are of the “analytical” type, nearly the exact opposite of the Pranksters.) But like fictional Christ learning Kung-Fu, I’ve got to feel like that mysterious improv current is out there, and you just have to tap into it and let it make you move at the speed of life (man).

And if you want, I know a guy.