Alex in NYC
There are some things that are worth the risk, and sometimes the risking is even more important than any of the outcomes. One of my favorite people in the world, a crazy Polish director who had a habit of wearing extremely long scarves, always talked about risk. She said that it’s sometimes necessary to simply take enormous leaps, and then build wings while you’re falling. She inspired me to keep pushing during times when I was convinced that the only thing left to do was give up. She lives her life like she’s at a New York casino hotel, with access to the best of everything.
And every moment poses another series of possibilities for taking enormous chances, and for enormous successes as well. Her definition of success was very different than most definitions, however, and depended on the level of experiment in any undertaking. If something large was gambled, then it was a success. We would often find ourselves in dark pubs after rehearsals, long after the other actors had left, talking about the theories of Witkacy, and wondering what might be possible right here, and right now. The sense of hope and possibility was always extremely large and heavy on those evenings, and the next day was always followed by an equal share of despair.
We kept working though. She had her projects, and I had mine, and every once in awhile our paths would cross and we would meet to confer. I would run through the list of my daily confusions, which are always very large, and never hold up under any considered examination, and I would ask her if my version of reality made any sense, and if I could modify it somehow. She always had ideas, because she was a visionary through all those years. She could offer a simple way of rephrasing something that could change the way it looked. It was the power of invocation, because she had an alchemical way with words. I learned how to risk from her, and everything that I’ve discovered since then is covered with a golden sheen that belongs to her alone.
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