10A. Follow the Leader, Calling Names

• You'll play "Follow the Leader." When you hear me call your name, you know you're the Leader. The rest of the group will do whatever you do until I call the next name. (Of course, adjustments have to be made to accommodate physical limitations.) Do anything you want. Movement, vocalization, language, props, leave the room. Anything.

• Remember, this is the first exercise of the day. Do what you need to do to get here, into this room, into your body, to connect with your spirit and with one another.

• Leaders, see your actions within the context of the previous actions. Build off one another. When you hear your name called, continue on as Leader, right from where you are, from your action and from within your feeling. Don't feel pressured to entertain the group, or keep everybody busy.

• In a sense, there's a collaborative relationship between all the Leaders. You're building this event together. Towards the end, particularly the last person, take the group to closure.

• Follow the Leader calls forth the present-mindedness that is a basic component of improvisation. At the same time that you experience the seductive pleasures of being part of the pack, following the team, aimlessly, irresponsibly, your number may come up. You may be called on to lead. You can't leave yourself elsewhere, trodden under the heels of everyone else. You have to summon your power to lead from where you are, right there, right then and act on it.

"What do I do if I don't like what the Leader is doing? If I don't

have that kind of energy, or physical capability? I personally

object to that kind of content?"

You try everything out whether you like it or not. Believing you can't be a certain way, or do a particular thing ("I'm this, I'm not that"), indi­cates that you think you already know that experience. In moment-to-moment awareness, that's never true. It's impossible to project into experience. Moments of experience are in reality different, the result of many influences. It's our minds which have a static idea of that experience. If we limit our mind, it will be limited.

All experience is in everyone of us. What we most detest in ourselves we will find in others. Once we move into the experience, we will see that it can be different if we allow it to be, that it is different by its own nature.

"But suppose the Leader is doing activity with no feeling, mean­ing or content? That doesn't inspire me and I feel uncomfortable with?"

Our expectations control our experience, creating standards by which we judge everything. "That's right." "That's wrong." "That makes me happy." "That makes me feel pain." The problem with this is the "that makes me ..." part. Our inner peace is determined by this self-created external fiction. Suppose we don't expect anything. Suppose we accept whatever we're presented with. The curiosity we respond with leads to not only acceptance, but, fascination with diversity.

This doesn't imply that we will become passive voyeurs "oohing" and "aahing" at unkind, or unjust, acts. Our responses to these occasions will be immediate and appropriate, unleashed from past ideology. Instead of emotionally motivated, they'll be compassionately charged.

Endings

Follow the Leader also gives practice in laying down stones. Each Leader adds a piece of the path. When John hears his name called, he begins to lay down the next segment as his part within the whole. How he's experienced the whole so far inspires his contribution.

The last person closes the event, preferably without feeling responsible for a "good ending." If she remains present and attentive to the unfolding experience, an ending will surface. A "good ending" will dictate the narrow demand, "Now I must make something interesting." This will usually be predictable and obvious; i.e., the flower folding its petals, or everyone laying down on the floor either in death or sleep, a group hug, exiting off the floor with an attitude that the exercise is over. When we finish this way we really don't end, we just vacate our experience.

Endings can surprise the "ender" and everyone involved. By staying present, with the trust that at some point an ending will appear, an ending will appear.

We're following a "big" mind that never ends and never closes. We're not making linear theater, with a beginning, middle and end. We're not looking for resolution. We may never resolve anything. But we recog­nize moments, when the idea, image or rhythmic pattern that we're engaged in can conclude. These cue moments that we can walk away from, that feel free, that we don't want any more or any less from. Our concept of endings becomes more and more unpredictable as we expand our awareness.

So far, the students have not had to pay attention to the collective rhythms. The Leader does something. Others copy it, simultaneously. Now, we graze away from the Follow the Leader sequence to an exercise that leads to "choiceier" copying.