The finger is not the moon

"The way to Tai Chi begins with the teaching of a mentor; the mastery of the art comes from enduring self-practice."

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Over the past few years, there have been times where it’s been a struggle to keep up with my tai chi practice. On those muscle-sore or muggy-headed mornings, the bed just seems like a wonderful place to stay in. Oh, why get up for practice in the park; or to commute all that way from 大埔 to 青龍頭?

Nevertheless, I get up. On those days, the thing that kicks me out of bed is the thought of my 師傅’s mortality. As far as I know, Victor is not in any particular danger of dying, but since his sister’s funeral a couple of years ago, I’ve become aware of how transient our lives can be. And I would hate to look back and say, “Oh, I wish I had paid more attention then.” No, on that day I would want to be able to look Victor in the eye and say, “I did my best to learn from you.”

Honestly, there’s nothing worse than feeling you’ve wasted your sifu’s time. I hate being corrected by Victor for something that I know I am capable of, but due to my physical/mental state, am unable to deliver. Over the past three years, I’ve become physically and mentally much stronger, and so I can push myself a lot further in my theatre, and still be generally present in my kuen. Still, I can tell when I’m not at my cutting edge, and it’s always a relief to return to the kuen after all those productions.

Although we’ve never formalized the sifu-disciple relationship, in practice our lives have been intertwined in ways beyond usual teacher-student interactions. Victor co-signed the bank account for Burnt Mango, acted in my first drama production, and even went with me to look at my first flat (which I ended up not buying, but that’s another story). We’ve been to weddings and funerals together, and spend every Thursday in the Club O kitchen serving food to the community. But we have, by and large, skirted around the commitment of a proper 師徒 relationship, in part because it really is a very binding and official commitment.

But clearly, Victor thinks it’s now time for me to move on. On Monday he suddenly announced: No more lessons as a student. We’re going to break for two months while I move house, and then if you choose, you and Carlos can come back for disciple-like training on Sunday mornings.

Argh. Sunday mornings are bad. Very bad. It’s smack-bang in the middle of my teaching weekend, and in the short-term, difficult to wriggle out of. But it’s an ultimatum: take it or leave it.

I realize how accustomed I have become to going to Victor’s twice a week.

I feel like a boat suddenly cut adrift upon the open sea.



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00:19:30 Tai Chi	心中有劍	反覆在當下

The Midori Question

I have all these thoughts but they are not so organised. However, I also know that I promised to post here regularly. So in the meantime, here is a letter I wrote to the (No)rwegian Wood cast as a sort of stop-gap. I'm going to write this one up properly when I have time. 談開太極,用中文表達會更貼切, 可惜寫中文這麼慢!

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Dear cast,

I just had a minor revelation this morning. Adrian has been trying to make you do tai chi!

Josephine was expressing how it seems that Adrian and I give completely different feedback when it comes to the speed of the performance. For example, in the dress run where Adrian was very satisfied that you were taking time to sense every moment, I was going, "Well.... that's ok, but you need to pay attention to the tension and drive of each scene."

Actually, while on the surface there appears to be contradiction, I'd like to think actually it's a question of process. The more I think about it, the more I realise that Adrian and I are actually addressing the same question. Let me use tai chi as an analogy.

At its heart, tai chi is a martial art. Behind every move is an intention to defend or attack. However, the main practice of tai chi is a slow movement form. 太極的修練表面上就是有這樣矛盾. 為何要慢練? 憑這個速度去打交, 一早比人打死了!

In tai chi, the purpose of making you practice that slowly is so that you can take time to understand the process of each movement. To taste the nuance of the weight shift, the transfer of energy from earth through center through the hand to the heel of your palm where you will 發勁 . And in the same way, good acting, like tai chi, is about the actor being able to feel the nuances of each action and reaction. And that's why Adrian was continuously asking you to take time, take time. It's so that you could be conscious of every detail.

Now the tricky thing is, this process is a very grounded, deliberate practice. The challenge we had in this play is that we actually have characters who are much younger, more unstable than we generally are in life. Walter needed to make the shift from his usual grounded self to become a 19 year old. Haruka needed to make that shift to be someone more fragile and unstable. And Midori is, by nature, a very pure form of wild energy.

And so when I was saying "Wynne, great stuff" and Adrian said, "That energy was too high.. there was not enough detail.." what I was responding to was actually Wynne's energy. There's a very clear colour of Midori for me, that Wynne has in a very raw form.

Now in the process of grounding Wynne, I felt that -- argh, this is like Midori after she has been dating Toru for years, when she's sort of absorbed a Toru rhythm! So for a few days I was really pondering over this contradiction about training actors to be grounded and the fact that we actually want some characters to be ungrounded. Unlike film, where you just shoot and capture that moment, theatre seems to demand a more deliberate, consistent process.

How then, to swing between the two poles and enjoy the freefalling moments in between?

It was really on Sunday's afternoon show that I began to see the fruit of this slow, deliberate process. Wynne really nailed her performance in that show. The two things came into one in a character that was clearly Midori energy and rhythm, but with an aware actor.

Yes, this is what both Adrian and I have been looking for. Just like in tai chi, after months of slow practice you come to understand the movement, you are then able to transfer the energy very fast in the right path, because you know what you are doing. So on the occasion you do fight, intention and form are one. 拍! They will fall dead on the spot (or cough up blood exactly twelve hours after you hit them.)

In many ways, the show is still young for me, just at the age of 17 or 19. We have just begun to discover many things. Certainly, it's taught me a lot about the process of acting.

It's been a real privilege for me to see everyone take their acting to the next level. So thank you, Adrian, for giving us this playground to play in. Arigatou gozaimasu.

love,
Hofan.

心中有劍

(x= 發白日夢)

十一月份本來出國，師傅叮囑我「記得練拳」。我說時間許可的話，我會找地方練。

「沒有地方，也可以在腦海裏耍。乘飛機花那麼多小時，可把握時間。這種訓練是非常好的，因為會逼你確定每個動作，清楚知道自己正在做什麼。」師傅是這樣細心…太極訓練是沒有假放的!

結果我沒有出國，沒有飛機坐，所以沒有需要「心中耍太極」來消磨時間。但幾個星期前在大圍火車站等朋友時突然記起師傅的提議，就儘管試試心中耍拳。

站在人來人往的火車站，我靜了下來，氣沉丹田, 一呼一吸從一個簡單的單式套路攬雀尾開始在腦海中耍。原來經過日日反覆的練習，呼吸已有自己熟悉的節奏，身體已有熟悉的勁路。站在大圍火車站的大堂，身體比平常還要熱，氣感比平時用身體耍拳更明顯。

但最奇妙的是: 當我分心發白日夢，浮雲回到當下時，發覺自己的意識在某個連我都不知是什麼的層面上，已不斷地把套耍下去。像一個人在家裏可以在黑暗和半清醒的狀態下能夠穿過客廳到廚房倒一杯水給自己喝一樣，原來經過日積月累的練習我能夠跟隨我的身體記憶。Amazing. 發白日夢都可以在潛意識繼續耍拳!


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00:19:30 Tai Chi

“I want you to time yourself,” said Victor. “See if you can do the whole 108 sequence in 20 minutes.”

“Why 20 minutes?” I asked, “I mean, I know this is the standard asked by the Hong Kong Tai Chi Association. But why is the standard to 20 minutes? Will I achieve an altered state of consciousness if I hit 20 minutes exactly?”

“Just try it.”

In the old days, they used to have a rule where if you had a question you wanted to ask your 師傅 he would tell you to go away and practice for a week. And after one week, if you hadn’t managed to solve the question yourself, only then were you allowed to bother your teacher. Actually, I think there’s a lot of wisdom is setting this time lag, because many questions (such as the one above) are asked in ignorance. Even if the sifu answers, he or she can only answer on a verbal level. “Well, if you do it too fast you won’t taste the details; if you do it too slow you will train your muscles”… that sort of answer. But some questions can only be answered with an experience; words are but an approximation.

So, I tried timing myself one Thursday morning. It really wasn’t the best of mornings, because I hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before, so my mind was racing at 300kmph. But the air was crisp, fresh autumn, and I was glad to be outside in the park.

When I first started tai chi, my kuen would be really affected by my mental state. For example, if I didn’t get enough sleep, or was stressed out by a theatre production, my 套路 performance would really suffer. What I discovered that morning, however, is that my body now knows the way. In the same way that I am able to navigate my path in the dark to the kitchen to get a cup of water without bumping into furniture, my body knows the path of the 108 sequence blindfolded. So even though my mind was running rampant, my body was steadily keeping time. Breath by breath, it was like wading through clear water. And because my breath was steady, my mind gradually allowed itself to be shepherded back into the fold.

When I finished, I looked at the watch. Nineteen minutes and thirty seconds. Ha!
I timed myself again on Sunday. Twenty minutes thirty seconds. Ha!

But numbers are meaningless. Time is but a physical structure. It was fun to know that I could do it, but inside I know the quality of my practice is not at cutting edge.

“I still prefer to do it slower,” I told Victor the next week. “Here I’m catching the flow of the kuen. It’s like I’m listening to the flow. But I feel to really progress, I need to really take time and taste the details.”

“It’s two separate things,” he said. “You should practice the listening to the flow, but you should also take fragments of the sequence and study it in detail.”

“And then put it back into the sequence,” I said. “I know. I know.”

But it’s one thing to know with the brain, and another to be able to grok it.

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Sifu 師傅	心中有劍	反覆在當下

反覆在當下 (太極與戲劇 i)

排練 —— 英文為 rehearsal, 有再聽一次 (re-hear)的含意；法文則為 repetition, 有反覆多次的意思。但我還是比較喜歡波蘭語的 próba。在字源上說，próba（排練）和 spróbować（嘗試）同根，反映一種重視劇場實驗探索的精神。反觀中文，「排練」一詞仿佛有安排、整理的意味。難道我們中國人相信好的戲劇是有規有矩、有條不紊的?

反覆練習的意義

起初到法國留學, 第一次聽到 repetition 這個詞時, 就覺得很奇怪. 難道在法國人眼中，排練只是不斷地「重複」演繹? 若是如此，哪裏有改進的可能？

不過，近年開始學太極，就發現不斷「重複」一些指定動作也不一定是件事。練習太極是非常奇怪的一回事，反反覆覆都是練一個套路。當然, 江南上套路千變萬化，一世都學不盡。但真正練功求精不求多, 重點是從反覆的練習過程中, 深化自己對套路的領悟。

正因為每清晨都是耍同一套動作, 才突現出一天與一天狀態的不同：這幾天睡眠不足,身體狀態差; 那個星期有演出, 精神難以集中。覺醒之後，方學到怎樣放下雜念，追求活在當下的「無極」和身心靈的純淨澄明。

對於演員, 尤其是舞台演員,「無極」的修煉是非學不可的。舞台演員不僅渴求一場無懈可擊的演出，而是每晚都要發揮出應有水平。反覆排練就是要讓演員鍛煉出穩定水準。無論白天與情人分手或和老板爭吵，晚上的表演都不容有失。演員的工作就是尋找劇場的當下。一齣豐富的劇，反複排練/演出是一個精彩的過程。演員會不斷發現一句台詞能夠包含的意思和可能性有多千變萬化，而不禁發出讚歎. 。

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畫家畢卡索(Pablo Picasso)就曾經說過： 「糟的藝術家只會複製，好的藝術家則是偷取」.讀過 Anne Bogart 的 A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre (Routledge, 2001) 的朋友會認到本週的靈感是從她偷取的.