Energy

[csecooney]

Mine was the great happiness of gathering with three friends last night at the Bean and Leaf in New London. One was my best friend Mir. Another a lovely woman who was our choreographer in As You Like It, a dancer, a Coast Guard Commander and a teacher (among many other things). And this fellow from work whose big, weird, beautiful brain I'd love to

Comments

[deliasherman]

You're right. It's not a strict binary. It is, like most human traits, a spectrum, with most of us floating about in the middle of it. For instance, I have both Greta Garbo (I vant to be alone) and Party Girl impulses. I love to teach, which is a kind of performance, but I suffer from horrible stage fright when called upon to stand up and sing or recite. I can talk to almost anybody, and I enjoy having that skill, but exercising it for too long makes me want to hide under the bed. And if I'm alone too long, I turn into a crabby nut.

When pressed, I call myself a gregarious introvert.

Many performers are drained by unstructured interactions with people they don't know. I have an inchoate theory about how performance both reveals and hides an actor's inmost soul, vulnerability, and control, but it's too vaporous to pin down in words.

[csecooney]

I like your inchoate theories. I will invite you to expound FURTHER in person!!! Because I do so enjoy when we all end up babbling for hours.

[seabird78]

"Also, it's not a strict binary, I think. Certain people, being with them, having conversations with them, is galvanizing, stimulating, not exhausting at all. Especially when one has invited them in for that purpose

[csecooney]

It doesn't actually terrify me. It just exhausts me. And irritates me. But I get that - about going to concert you're super excited about, or to the theatre. Going somewhere where you're happy and safe, and even sometimes glad to be alone. Because you know that anyone else who is there is probably there because they longed to be. So you already have something in common, already something to talk about, already something that sets a groundwork for radical surprise.

[seabird78]

Yeah, exhausting and irritating are other good ways to describe it.

[pattytempleton]

That you can withstand the continual tide of 4000 tourists daily is amazing. Or appalling. I'm not sure. That's a lot of people. Dear sweet Eris, a lot of people. Ugh. It would make me want to cower every time I got home. The normal flow of a restaurant or a library is enough to send me reeling into alone time.

You, lady, are an inspiration of self examination.

[csecooney]

If there's one thing I know about Eris, it's that she ain't sweet. But I think she likes when "sweet" is a swear word. :-)

Burgle.

(I actually just meant to write a nonsense word, a cross between gurgle and burble, but it ends up that burgle is actually a real word that I even know. That I associate with Bilbo Baggins, in fact. In fact, it is a verb. To burgle. I burgle, you burgle, we all burgle together. BURGLEBURGLEBURGLE. Burgle would make a great name for a Gnome. The gnome Burgle. And her sister Inveigle. And their cousin Spreaghery.)

Um.

End of day. That's where I'm at.

[asakiyume]

A fascinating and thought provoking post; I'd never thought about introversion and extroversion in terms of energy, and I like the insights that brings. Thanks!

And here's one for you. You said,

I find it very difficult to do things I've never done before.

And I was thinking about something similar earlier in the day, about how to challenge oneself, in whatever sphere. And I had this thought: I think part of what makes new things less challenging to try is if you can see some kind of analogue in something you've done before. I guess that's how our minds work anyway? Understanding by analogy? So you can harness that (sometimes) to make the different seem less totally alien.

Maybe. I don't know. But in terms of creating your own stepping stones--I think I'll try it, anyway. See if it works.