Living in the Now

This is a vast world we live in. And it's so incredibly tiny. Nearly 7 billion mini-worlds swimming blindly around, casually bumping into one another, slowly absorbing others like  dying stars, or just blatantly ignoring everything around them, blasting through life on their own mini-missions from mini-Houston. It amazes me that with all of the ignoring going on, people can still find time to make connections. We don't ever seem to open our senses.

Through improv, I've been able to meet people from all over the world. I've met people who traveled from England and Australia to study improv in Chicago. I've also met people from my hometown here also because of improv. Sure, those are just coincidences. But just like Commissioner Gordon says, "You're a detective now - there are no coincidences." Such as improv. Those are signs of being in the right place at the right time.

Explaining improv to people who aren't improv people is ridiculous. It's not impossible, but it often ends with people looking like this:

I explain that it's not just about getting up on stage at your local Laugh Shack and spouting off funny one-liners while making Buffy the Vampire Slayer references *ahem*, or dropping movie titles left and right trying to impress people. Sure, we make stuff up and we fly sans script, but there's more to it than that.

Did you like the movie Limitless with THE Bradley Cooper? Good, me too. Because it's all about improv. Alright, there was a script, but the film had a strong feel of improv. When Bradley got into a jam, he would take a clear pill, and his mind would explode with possibilities. He wrote a novel, cleaned his apartment, AND went all Good Will Hunting on the stock market. Improv is like this little pill...it allows you to see, feel, and use everything in your environment.

"I once was blind but now I see." When you allow yourself to notice your surroundings, life happens. Such as improv.

Or how about Jim Carrey's Yes Man? All he did was say yes and agree to do everything that came his way. Look how much fun he had, not knowing what was happening next, but building on what others brought before him! He ordered a foreign bride, learned Korean, and saved a man's life with Third Eye Blind. Third. Eye. Blind.

Major aspects of what I've learned about improv can be summed up with someone a non-improv person said to me. "Improv is like meditation. The past is regret, the future is fear. Live in the present." This was my MOM, people! Not an improv wizard, just a general wizard in life. She was able to sum up the idea of improv in a sentence, and to my knowledge, has never hopped up on an improv stage.

She said this profound statement to me multiple times. The first time, I just didn't get it. She said it again months later and I was ready to hear it, and it began to link all of these little signs and space bubbles together. Not coincidences, but the right place, right time moments. Linking pieces of life, literature, events, thoughts...I felt that my world was a winding down Tarantino movie, connecting all the characters and stories together.

This chapter in my life was a...a...a Harold.

To non-improv people, a Harold is basically my aforementioned description of a Tarantino movie, only more layered and complicated, and usually with less blood. Such as life.

In the actor's world of constant rejection and dire need to be accepted and wanted, it's nice to know these parallels exist. It let's you know that even if they didn't cast you, they still want to be friends.