OCADU, February 2025
Have I ever? Have I ever? Have I ever stepped into a room filled with strangers and not felt fear? I feel fear now. What shall we do with our fear? Should we turn it into an enemy, an unwanted part of ourselves that we should go to war against? Should we try to conquer our fear and kill it? For me, I think of fear as my little friend who needs protection, like a small dog who teaches us how to look after ourselves, by looking after them.
When it’s your turn to speak, I hope that you can be with your fear, with softness, to speak alongside your fear even in a room filled with ears.
In the cinema, what we see at the beginning of the movie is the corporate master. I don’t know about OCADU, but most schools around the world have a requirement that their name, their logo, their image, is the first thing you see, and of course the last thing, because our corporate masters must be bowed to, first the money, and then the image. In corporate culture (and what has not become corporate culture?), the flicks you see on TV or Netflix or movie theatres, the image comes from that money, it is an image of money.
In the traditional grammar of cinema the first few pictures and sounds are called the establishing shot. We are in the establishing shot of our time together, right now. The establishing shot gives us a feeling, or they frame a setting, a place, where the experience will unfold. The establishing shot is a kind of prophecy. We don’t know what will take place, but it’s all going to happen here.
Here in the frame of this classroom. The frame of this fear. My fear and yours.
Do you know this guy who used to play in jazz bands, his name is Keith Jarrett. He played with Miles Davis in the late sixties, and then with other bands but he also had a solo career. He would play piano by himself, in concert halls that were ten times, twenty times larger than this room we find ourselves in today. And he would improvise, he would make it up, for an hour or an hour and a half. And what he would do is he would walk in, and sit down at the piano, and wait for the applause to die down, and then he would feel the room. Did you know there’s music in every room you’ve ever walked into? This room (go and touch a wall) has its own sound, it’s different than the room that’s next to this room, it’s different than the music of the hallway. Can you hear the music of this room? And understand that you are changing this music, because when you step into this room, you become part of the music. And if you would come early to this class and sit in this desk over here (go to that desk), or in this desk over here (go to that desk), or in this desk over here (go to that desk), you could listen to the music of the room change as each person entered it.
That’s what Keith Jarrett was playing when he sat down at pianos all over the world. (snap fingers again and again) Every moment is completely different. Every moment is completely different. Every moment is completely different. How to offer our attention to those differences, to our differences, to our music? How could we hold that music, I mean, the music of each other, without having to decide: this is good music, this is music that pleases me, I like this music. Or else: this is bad music, this is music that doesn’t please me, I don’t like this music. Is it possible to have a conversation without saying: I like it, I don’t like it. I think those responses come from fear. Did you like that movie? Did you like that class? That teacher? Yes. No. Fear creates a distance. The movie, the class, it’s a thing. It’s over there and my primary relationship to it is being a judge. Because I’m afraid, afraid of being close. Of letting it touch me, of changing me. This little animal of fear can become as large as a god. I like it god, I don’t like it god. So that we can be safe. The distance keeps us safe. And of course the first thing that we judge, the first thing we say: I like it, I don’t like it is… What do you think?
If you open wide and look deep inside I think you might find: a courtroom, with a judge sitting high above it all saying: Innocent. Guilty. I like it. I don’t like it. Is that why you want to make art? So that people will like you? So that people won’t like you, because you’re a rebel, you have different ideas and want to bring down the system? I guess I’m asking: what is your relationship to fear, the fears that live in your body. The fears that live in our city.
I was hoping that you could help me with two sentences. If you could say something, whatever you like, about these two sentences. I saw them written on a poster down the hall. I thought: oh, this must be part of the music of this frame, the frame that we’re in right now. Here’s the first sentence: This is the best possible time, in all of history, to make movies. Here’s the second sentence: This is the worst time, in all of history, to make movies. Could someone tell me why? Could every person here tell me why? Could someone help me? Could we help each other? Holding our fear, speaking out through a frame of fear. Fear stops all the words, even thoughts are frozen inside this fear.