It seems appropriate to transform this brief video into a lesson about accepting and transforming the darkness in humans.
In 2017, I signed up for an online course with Kevin Spacey, through the education service Master Class.
Kevin Spacey was unable to finish teaching the course. That was the year his own darkness blew up his career.
I took the course because we were expected to send in our class work by video. It was a challenge for me to overcome. I still hated myself then. How I looked, how I sounded, everything about me as a physical person. I had written the dramatic poem I used for this scene in the 1990s, in response to a one man play about Merlin that a friend, Dikran Tulaine, was performing at the time.
In the years since I’ve slowly learned to stop hating myself in any way. I’ve learned to accept who I am. And what I am responsible for. Even the shadows and the light of me. For, sometimes, the light is less kind than the shadows can ever be. Wanting to be much better, and very different, from who I am.
When I made the video I didn’t care about quality of video or sound. Now, that quality I still care about. I care about making my art, more than I ever have before. What I do, I understand, needs more thought and critical observation. How I use my skills. How I see myself? That needs nothing added. No doubts, and no ego. Just to be me. We make more mistakes of acting out who we are, when we don’t know who we are. I do know now. I am just a person who wants to experience, shape, and do interesting things. That’s my life.
So I played around with my awful video. And showed the worst of my shadow. The arrogance of a jealous anger just on the verge of accepting that what I wanted, was something I could never know. I could just be me. And take the dark energy that I felt, and put it into creating art, not more darkness.
When Morgaine gives up her arrogance to tell of the one unknown word, she accepts her fear of being known as herself. And finds herself not retreating into the shadows. But more securely into a balance of darkness and light.
That is what all of us need. That balance.
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