embodied cognition
Nov. 18th, 2006 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiedyedaveLast night I went to Body Choir, on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
foolmonkey's recommendation. It was a very heartening experience; much to my shame, it was also exhausting, due to my relatively unfit physical condition. I danced the way that I dance, the way that I want to dance, when no one's watching. Being in a room full of people who have willfully forgotten to be self-conscious, and then following their example, was very liberating. In many other environments, I fail miserably at dancing, surrounded by people who are doing it the right way, or the trained way, or the culturally indoctrinated way. Having no formal training and a dearth of informal experience with the conventional forms of dance, I am perpetually at a loss in these situations. My typical response is to just do something instinctive, and stop cold as soon as someone gives me a funny look for it. Which sucks.
This touches on one of those larger personality issues that I should eventually post about, but I hesitate, since pure personality discussion rarely makes for good reading, and I would not want to subject you to it, dear reader.
Anyway it was fun. Did lots of footwork, skip-and-stop kind of stuff. Also tried, despite the fact that I was the new guy, to interact with some people. That was fun and a bit goofy, owing to my frequent failure to synchronize and follow signals. While it may have been lighthearted and enjoyable by virtue of my clumsiness, I would really like to get better and dancing with other people, just in general. My natural responses seem to be out of phase, and I can't keep up well enough to establish any interesting interactions or symmetries.
I also saw The Departed afterwards, withfoolmonkey. It did not disappoint. Indeed, it excited, and sometimes awed. Lots of violence. Lots of good acting. DiCaprio was especially good, reminding me of his excellent acting in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Catch Me If You Can. Lots of spot-on Boston accents and conversational style (or at least spot-on Massachusetts; I infer Boston accents, to which I have little exposure, as a slight displacement from Worcester accents, with which I am extremely familiar). And of course, Vera Farmiga in minimal clothing (or indeed, even fully dressed) is always a welcome visual experience.
And today I saw Stranger Than Fiction. I know I liked the movie, but I can't yet verbalize any precise elements that made me like it. Will Ferrell was quite impressive; he appears to have made that same luminous transition into quality acting in serious roles that Jim Carrey made with The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Emma Thompson was also excellent, though that's no surprise.
foolmonkey's recommendation. It was a very heartening experience; much to my shame, it was also exhausting, due to my relatively unfit physical condition. I danced the way that I dance, the way that I want to dance, when no one's watching. Being in a room full of people who have willfully forgotten to be self-conscious, and then following their example, was very liberating. In many other environments, I fail miserably at dancing, surrounded by people who are doing it the right way, or the trained way, or the culturally indoctrinated way. Having no formal training and a dearth of informal experience with the conventional forms of dance, I am perpetually at a loss in these situations. My typical response is to just do something instinctive, and stop cold as soon as someone gives me a funny look for it. Which sucks. This touches on one of those larger personality issues that I should eventually post about, but I hesitate, since pure personality discussion rarely makes for good reading, and I would not want to subject you to it, dear reader.
Anyway it was fun. Did lots of footwork, skip-and-stop kind of stuff. Also tried, despite the fact that I was the new guy, to interact with some people. That was fun and a bit goofy, owing to my frequent failure to synchronize and follow signals. While it may have been lighthearted and enjoyable by virtue of my clumsiness, I would really like to get better and dancing with other people, just in general. My natural responses seem to be out of phase, and I can't keep up well enough to establish any interesting interactions or symmetries.
I also saw The Departed afterwards, with
foolmonkey. It did not disappoint. Indeed, it excited, and sometimes awed. Lots of violence. Lots of good acting. DiCaprio was especially good, reminding me of his excellent acting in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Catch Me If You Can. Lots of spot-on Boston accents and conversational style (or at least spot-on Massachusetts; I infer Boston accents, to which I have little exposure, as a slight displacement from Worcester accents, with which I am extremely familiar). And of course, Vera Farmiga in minimal clothing (or indeed, even fully dressed) is always a welcome visual experience.And today I saw Stranger Than Fiction. I know I liked the movie, but I can't yet verbalize any precise elements that made me like it. Will Ferrell was quite impressive; he appears to have made that same luminous transition into quality acting in serious roles that Jim Carrey made with The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Emma Thompson was also excellent, though that's no surprise.
