I started working with Matt at MCS in 2008, and after a year, stopped. I stopped because there needed to be one thing in the world I could stopper.
I came to NYC for acting, but all along, as I was telling people I was moving, I had a sneaking suspicion that I had no idea what I was in for, and it wasn’t just gonna be acting.
They say New York will chew you up and spit you out. But I don’t think that’s exactly true. A friend of mine says, “New York brings out the worst in you. But it also brings out the best in you if you can get through ‘the worst’ part.”
My worst was just ahead.
Because, I have always been the nice girl, the good girl, the girl you can trust and rely on. Man, I think I’ve always hated that about myself. I felt the rumblings of stuff down below all the time (and I don’t mean indigestion), and have always worn a society-acceptable face (on occasion I can be quite the dork, but in general, I’d worked hard to not stick out). I never was volatile, though I found myself always angry. I never was unreasonably sad, although I was in such deep grief I could hardly keep it bottled. I never burst with joy, though I wanted it desperately.
Matt began to uncork things (trying for the “full and true”, you know), and after a few months, I began leaking so badly, I was finding that I couldn’t stopper myself when I left class. To me, the streets of New York were awash in anger; everywhere I went all I heard were people fighting. Men and women became one long chain of lonely desperates. I was hypersensitive to being with people, but I also, for the first time in this introvert’s life, could hardly stand being with myself.
My PM2* ‘s self-exposure caught me by surprise. I had grown up in a good family, had (relatively) good experiences, had no reason to feel the victim. But I’ve found every family has its curses, passed down generation to generation; and now I saw a pattern I could trace through grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, my parents and now to me. I loathed myself.
I think I’d always recognized that I was somewhat embarrassed when True-Me would sneak out when I wasn’t paying attention (snort-laughing when you have gas can be pretty devastating). But I don’t think I knew that “Fear and Loathing in New York” was the perfect Heidi-title. I was deep in fear of what would happen if I was myself, and deep in loathing that I wasn’t.
I stopped Matt’s class (along with a number of other things) that I might have control on stopping something in my world. I put down all creative things in my life, covered the mirrors with black cloth, shaved my head, and began to chip away at the fear and lies that had been completely acceptable in my world (but not my art) up to now.
It’s been four years of practicing telling the truth about myself to myself (and now, to other people). I have worked hard to stop all the judgment and manipulation of my image. I actually am beginning to trust my own instincts, and give value to my whims and ideas. I don’t think I recognized this before, but creatively, I used to draw on fear or that which comes out of fear (anger, grief, disgust). Because I had some power out of that, I remember being afraid of what would become of me artistically if I pursued healthiness and truth.
I wondered when it would happen, if it would happen. It happened in January: the draw back to acting, to creatively expressing myself in a professional environment. Coming back to MCS felt like a test to see if my truth-telling held up (because Matt doesn’t let you lie) if my abandoning fear as a driver would send me into a tailspin, grasping for my mask, or if I could be fully vulnerable with strangers, with a loud Italian man yelling, “Again!” I looked around that first class back, and thought, if I can convince myself that these people love me, I will be safe to expose myself in repetition, and be able to focus on the other person, without wanting to hide. But you cannot control if others love you (and it seems criticism is the way of the American public), so that con would be just that: a con. It passed through my head that if I loved my repeating partner–looked into her face and let myself be filled with her humanity, her uniqueness, her best and worst, and loved her — my safety would come from my own love, and I could trust enough to be vulnerable.
I was blown away at what come forth from my little creative love experiment: Allison (bless her) went ballistic and gave so generously to me that first night back repeating. The believing in myself, the working out of what love does to me and the other person (it, too, can get you good and mad and sad and joyful), the trusting myself enough to risk and not judge myself with the result: this saying no to fear… this is new to me, and I am adoring Matt for supporting and encouraging me in what feels like a new art to me now. The stuff that is coming out in me is truer and fuller than it has been since I was a child.
Loud Italian Man, you may now yell, “AGAIN!!”–Heidi Duncan
*PM2 is the nickname of Personal Monologue #2 which is writing/performing a monologue of what stops you…it’s an exercise with a blind spot; what stops you will actually stop you from finishing it..until…