Skip to main content

We're all freaking out a little, and when we're not aware of that we unintentionally amplify each other's fear

The title kind of says it all, but maybe it'll help to substantiate it.

I've noticed "emotional weather" in many social contexts, where commonly known incidents - negative or positive - have cultural ripples, in which people tend to "infect" one another with brightness or dismay, tension or ease, whatever it might be depending on the circumstances. Actual weather, like the first warm sunny days of Spring or extended gray and chill in winter, can have ripples like I mean. Cultural events, like unexpected gestures of deep decency or diplomatic crisis and breakdowns, or the release of a new album by a beloved group. Whatever kind of thing it might be, all these things can lead to a small undercurrent of emotion in many people, and the mutuality of these small changes can register between them, reinforcing the sense of ease or unease, all without the people experiencing them explicitly recognizing that it's happening.

One context where I get to explore glimpses of this is in leading the DC Sunday Jam Underscore. What I notice is that people arrive and do their individual warm-ups and launch into the score, sometimes with similar tenor. Maybe it's liveliness or maybe solemnity, or something altogether else. I often can't identify it, but have the feeling that there's some character to the group "mood", even though they – we – didn't arrive together, or particularly interact before the score started. Instead, it seems to me that we're all subject to some shared influences, and we're responding to them. Our interactions with others, who are also responding to these conditions, will reinforce some things that just exist as undercurrents, subliminal colorings of our emotional states.

How this can effect things in the course of the Underscore is a great opportunity to convey the point that the particular initial factors - the precipitating incidents or prevailing conditions which planted the seeds of the colorings - need not be explicitly present in any way for their effects to emerge and amplify. The Underscore is a collaborative movement improv score, conducted specifically without chatting, because that is a different score which tends to distract from the focus on mutual correspondence through movement. Yet the tenor of the emotional undercurrents still have plenty of opportunities to enter into the activity by the character of the movement and the ways that people respond to each other, resonating with some character and not with others.

It makes perfect sense to me that this kind of resonance process is going on in all kinds of shared spaces, whether it's the street or the supermarket. We don't need to talk to influence one another. There's so many ways that someone's mood affects how they respond to and otherwise interact with others, and that in turn affects and informs their behavior. Factor in shared conditions – circumstances that affect many people – and you can see how the affects they have on mood are particularly prone to resonate between them, and consequently amplify.

The substantiality and ominous uncertainty of COVID-19 is why I'm mentioning this right now. It's bound to make almost everyone nervous. (Even the name is techno-viral spooky!) The universality is bound to lead to lots of resonance, and the amplification can be alarming. "I know I'm nervous about this, but why am I feeling so shaky?" The trick is to not get freaked out by the fact that these undercurrents are resonating and amplifying. It's the fear of the fear that can make it seem like things are getting out of control, when they're actually not. There's reason to be nervous, but freaking out is usually not helpful. (Sometimes it's just the right thing to do, but it's not good for sustained periods!)

It's time to take care, and be careful. But taking care means being gentle with yourself, not stoking your fear unnecessarily.

My sister, Lisa, brought the Serenity Prayer to everyone's attention when a few members of our family were contending with some very serious health issues at the same time. It was a brilliant move, helping to spread the message of calm without disregard, and I can't imagine a tension-prone situation where it's not useful:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Blogger silently drops comments submitted by Safari in embedded-comments mode

We've noticed that comments submitted from Apple Safari (Mac or iPhone) are dropped without any notification if the blog is set with Comment location = Embedded. Having set it to Pop up (I think), it worked. We're going to try some more tests. That's what this post is for! From the comments testing we discovered some useful things: Using Comment location = embedded: Is necessary to enable replying to specific comments. Comments posted from Safari (laptop or iOS) are silently dropped. It looks to the person posting the comment that it went through, but the blog moderator sees no sign of it at all. Using Comment location = Pop up or Full page: Inhibits option to reply to other comments – no comment threads Enables comments from Safari The trade-off is clear. Losing comments from people who think they submitted them successfully is not acceptable. Particularly from a prominent browser (currently estimated to be a bit less than 4% of users). I just hate to lose comment threadin

A Contemplative Movement Online Score

Barbara Dilley developed a shared dance/meditation practice called Contemplative Dance Practice – CDP, a "dancer's meditation hall". I've been exploring adaptation of this score for online sharing. The aim is to share meditation and movement across the gap of social distancing. (See below the score description for online meeting logistics and further info about the practices.) (The framing of this score is a work in progress, continuing to change. Revision information is at the bottom.) Score Description The score is divided into sections. At the beginning of each timed section the facilitator says which section it is and arranges for a bell to sound at the beginning and the end of that section. Opening Circle : Time for brief introductions / check-ins and to review the outline of the score (essentially, the bold headers below). Meditation: 15 minutes for stillness . In the original score the participants share sitting meditation. We invite whatever meditat

An Accumulation Score for Ensemble Movement

Many people are acquainted with the notion of conventional musical scores, which describe what musicians should do to perform a song/piece. No matter how specific the instructions, it can't be perfectly complete. It's always necessary for the person performing the score to make choices of their own - particular emphases and cadences and whatever it is that establishes what the performer expects is best to realize the piece. At the other end of the spectrum, improvised pieces can have scores also. Those scores don't generally use standard notation, but instead describe some parameters of the piece in some way, leaving many aspects up to the participants. This accumulation score is one such movement improvisation score. I don't recall where I first learned about it, nor do I recall the exact instructions I received in the various times I've been exposed to it. The ones below are my own take on it, but I expect they're similar to those that many others have also