Sunday, May 14, 2006

post 264. from keith's upcoming work.

Beginners are doing something very difficult: great clowns are doing
something easier.

If great clowns get into a car it will go somewhere. Even if it
shakes itself to pieces it will at least have driven around the
circus ring a few times before it explodes. But if beginners (or
badly trained improvisers) pretend to get into a car some saboteur
will say 'There's no gas in the tank', or 'This car only goes in
reverse!' or 'We'd better look at the map first!", or 'I've left the
keys in the house', or 'I forgot to tell you - I took the wheels off
yesterday!'

A more experienced player might counter such sabotage by saying
things like: 'I've got a spare set of keys,' or 'I filled the tank
earlier this morning', and so on, but someone will cap this by
saying: 'Oh no! The engine's fallen out, or 'Oh dear, the steering
wheel's come off!" Even if the car manages to 'drive forwards' it'll
run over a pedestrian, or get a puncture, or the road will divide and
they'll argue about whether to go right or left - anything rather
than travel to a destination. Beginners see such behaviour as 'being
funny', but I see them as protecting themselves from a future in
which they might be altered
It's easier to 'drive away' than to invent reasons for not driving
away, but moving into the future implies the possibility of change.
But beginners experience 'being changed' while they're being stared
at as weakness, as a loss of control. So they conspire to have
nothing happen.

We see this as a 'lack of talent', but it's really a conspiracy not
to go anywhere.

Keith Johnstone