I have enjoyed following the Improv Everywhere missions since I first heard about them on This American Life a few years back.

What I especially enjoy is their aim of shaking people out of their everyday routines in a way that is enjoyable for everyone (unless someone is set on not enjoying it), and also their long form improvisation guideline of Yes, And.

Accepting an offer is usually accompanied by adding a new offer, often building on the earlier one; this is a process improvisers refer to as “Yes, And…” and is considered the cornerstone of improvisational technique. Every new piece of information added helps the actors to refine their characters and progress the action of the scene.

This is not a bad guideline for life in general.

Life throws something at us, and we can respond with a Yes, And… We say yes to it, and then add our own, advancing the story from a place of Yes, And. The Yes is an invitation to allow it, and even find peace with and appreciation for whatever is happening. And the And is an invitation for us to bring it something else to it, to take it further.

Or we talk with someone, they say something that has a grain of truth in it, which just about anything has, so we can acknowledge that grain of truth, and add another perspective. The Yes is an invitation to find the truth in their perspective, and the And is an invitation for us to bring something new to it.

The Yes is a wholehearted Yes to whatever is happening, an invitation for receptivity and appreciation. The And an invitation to actively add something to it, bring something new to it, advance the story in a way that may be interesting, entertaining, beautiful and touching.

(more…)

An episode of Pompel & Pilt, an anti-pedagogical Norwegian children’s TV series that made a big impression on one or two generations of Norwegian kids. I believe it was meant to get kids familiar with the absurdity of life, and question authority…! Worked for me, at least. Sorry about the lack of English subtitles, but it doesn’t make much more sense even if you understand Norwegian.

Pompel & Pilt are repair men, looking for something to repair, and get into uncomfortable situations with Gorgon The Janitor and some other creatures.

It is inspired by dadaism and absurdist theater.

I am still feeling that all of this is life 101 and getting pretty monomaniacal, obvious and predictable… which is partly why nothing new has come up here for some days.

The general maps are pretty predictable, but when I look, I still find that looking at how it all plays out in real life is not so obvious and predictable, so there is still some interest there. And it is always real life that sparks both the looking into what is happening here and now, and also generates the impulse to take it to maps…

For instance, I listened to a story about Laika, the first Earth being to orbit the planet, and how the world reacted with outrage of letting a poor innocent dog die in space.

The irony here is of course that nearly all of these outraged people happily eat meat from animals whose living conditions are often awful and are bred only to be killed and eaten, and use products tested on animals under equally awful conditions.

It is a given that these inconsistencies happen. We easily compartmentalize our lives, and see patterns in one area that we are blind for in other areas.

But what gets more interesting is to take a closer look at how, specifically, it happens in my own life, and in my own culture. Where do I find patterns that are OK for me in one area, and are an outrage to me in other areas?

And how does this happen right here and now?

Well, I judge those folks for being inconsistent, while doing the exact same thing myself. I judge them and don’t see my own inconsistency, in that moment. I see myself as right and them as wrong, just as they do, and I do exactly what I only see in others, just as they do. We are all in the same boat here.