In depth discussions of internal martial arts, theatricality, and Daoist ritual emptiness. Original martial arts ideas and Daoist education with a sense of humor and intelligence.
New Eastover Workshop, in Eastern Massachusetts, Italy, and France are in the works.
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Alexander Hamilton came from a place where life was cheap. In the West Indies of his time the majority of people were enslaved, didn't wear clothes and had an average working life expectancy of four years. He didn't know his father and his mother died when he was ten. Death was all around him, yet somehow he learned accounting and how to read and write in English, French, and Hebrew. At the age of 15 a devastating hurricane destroyed much of his surroundings and he wrote a vivid description of it which was published in newspapers all along the East Coast of the future US. Someone in New York was so impressed by his writing that they took up a collection to send him to Princeton! When he got there, talk of revolution was in the air and he convinced his dorm mates to practice marching drills with him from a book. When war came he marched his friends down to the armory and because he had already taken command they made him an officer on the spot. Shortly after the first battle he met George Washington who recognized his merits and made him Aide-de camp, responsible for all correspondence of the general.
And the rest is history. As far as supplying ideas and doing the intellectual leg work he is the single most important American founding Father. When a person's life has been that cheap-- and he gets through it-- he must see challenges differently than the rest of us. Not just challenges, but risks and ideas too.
Clarence Thomas has a lot of critics, enemies really. He was born in a Gullah community. The name Gullah is probably a distortion of Angola. The Gullah were isolated to some degree in language and culture because they used African fighting traditions to free bonded people and make war. After the American Civil War, a group of Gullah that were fighting on the Mexican Border were invited to join the US Calvary; later made famous by Bob Marley's song "The Buffalo Soldiers."
Clarence Thomas grew up in extreme poverty and hardship, abandoned by both parents he delivered coal as child, probably the dirtiest work there is. Yet he managed to attend school, always graduating at the top of his class and receiving one scholarship after another. To this day he is subjected to constant racist attacks that he is stupid and unworthy, that he only ever got anywhere in life because of other peoples pity, guilt and charity. Yet he knows how cheap life can be. His eloquent and unfettered opinion on the right to keep and bear arms is a necessary addition to our understanding of the history of the United States. Like Hamilton, Thomas knows that the pen is mightier than the sword. People who know how cheap life can be, fear the pen more than the sword, or in this case, the gun.
I've been watching a lot of Italian knife fighting lately. Its spontaneity and musicality are informing my jian (double edged sword) work. This art clearly comes from a place and time when life was cheap.
The Chinese arts I study are at least 500 years old, that's a lot of time to keep a tradition going. That means the arts survived many eras when life was cheap as well as eras when life was not so cheap. Classical artists try to consolidate and pass on as much of the essence of their art as they can. Yet, we often fail to understand the lessons of the previous generations. Without the actual experiences, accumulated knowledge is often just a shadow; shadows on top of shadows. I'm very lucky to have studied so much with George Xu because he lived through a time when life was very cheap. He has been able to bring many of those shadows to life! Perhaps it has been harder to learn from him those parts of the arts that flurished when times were not so cheap, thank goodness for my other teachers, but the beauty of these arts is that these shadows on top shadows take tangible forms if you nurture them. And George Xu certainly has taught me a kind of openness which can only come from choosing life!
There are several chapters of the Daodejing which are about living through times when life is cheap. I leave you with this one:
Exiting at birth, entering at death,
3 in 10 choose life,
3 in 10 choose death,
3 in 10, 'though they choose life, make decisions that bring about premature death.
Why? because they regard life as precious.
And then there are those who are good at nourishing life!
When entering a wilderness, they don't avoid tigers or rhinos,
When entering a battle, they don't put on armor or take up weapons.
Here is some more about him. He studied Jujitsu back in the day. He also believed that most people stop themselves from being naturally powerful. Here are some more stories. There is a book too but it's $70 on Amazon so I'm going to wait until Hannukkah.
It's a fun little article but the author schmootz's it at the end by dissing the addition of sugar as an American thing, so read this page out of Sugar And Society in China to re-balance the flavor.
Here is the pod cast of my talk at Soja martial arts. It's 2.5 hours long. I used a format where I had everyone get up and try the stuff I was talking about every 20 minutes or so. It was lots of fun. Thank you Soja for hosting it!
We need to learn how to edit these pod casts very soon, but until then, if you are listening to it on your computer the dial that spins around the cinch button allows you to move around in the talk, fastforword and rewind we use to call it.
I have been saying now for a few years that 'self-defense' is a relatively new idea. The basis of moral self-defense is a consequence of lower status people claiming parity against a majority. Chinese actors (a degraded caste) must have found it very difficult to claim justifiable homicide or self-defense in the courts against a commoner--because actors were required to step into the gutter when a commoner passed them in the street.
The same is certainly true of Jews in both Europe and the Middle East.
For women, the possibility of independence from the protection and authority of a man was closely related to a woman's ability to earn independent income. Along with income, and the right to vote, the notion of self-defense began to take shape.
I'm very excited to see other people are taking an interest in the history of the idea of self-defense. Here is a must read article:
One of the western world's first female martial arts instructors, Garrud, who died in 1971 aged 99, is thought to have learned jujutsu in the late 19th century. She began working with suffragettes between 1908 and 1911, eventually at her own women-only training hall, a room at the Palladium Academy dance school in Argyll Street
....."Woman is exposed to many perils nowadays, because so many who call themselves men are not worthy of that exalted title, and it is her duty to learn how to defend herself," [Edith Garrud].
Why was emptiness sought after by generals, princes, actors, exorcists, daoist hermits, fengshui masters, poets, judges, martial artists, and weavers?
Could emptiness mean being really, really relaxed? Or could it refer to becoming a container? If so, a container for what?
What is the difference between an empty body and an empty mind?
If becoming empty is a good thing, how is it applied?
Does qigong, yogic daoyin or tai chi help with this stuff?
Is there more than one type of emptiness?
This talk will cover the latest research into these questions and more.
May 20th, 2012
East Bay Yoga Shala
Sunday, 10:30 AM
2050 4th Street
Berkeley, CA
Scott P. Phillips teaches traditional Chinese martial arts, which he began studying when we was 10 years old. Instead of summer-camp, his parents sent him to a Buddhist monastery. His life long study of history, spontaneity, and Daoism is a regular part of his teaching.
Just saw an awesome new movie at the San Francisco International Film Festival by Peter Ho-Sun Chan, starring Donnie Yen titled Wuxia. A wuxia is a man or woman of extraordinary martial prowess. "Kungfu Hero" could have worked as a translation in a simpler time, but wuxia are generally capable of transcending conventional morality and their prowess can come from darker sources than just character and hard work. They tend to wander the lands of "rivers and lakes," the edges of society, the "bad lands," the wilds. And they often seem to take up a new name, wear a disguise, or impersonate an official. Sometimes they are loyal, sometimes they are cruel. They are chaos unleashed on civilization, at times tipping it out of balance, at other times putting things right. Their alliances, service, sworn brotherhoods, gangs, and grudges are of supreme consequence, the world teeters on their actions. Wuxia is actually a literary genre. So now that we understand what wuxia is all about I can reveal the plot. No, no, that would spoil everything! All you need to know is that it takes place in 1917 and the lead bad guy has all the powers of one of the founders of the Boxer Rebellion. He is a super qijock, even metal blades can not puncture his qi egg! there is also a crazy smart guy who fights using acupuncture techniques! The film has great costumes, sets, and props. That's important in a visceral movie like this one because you feel yourself inside their clothes, your grip on the handle of their swords, sweat on your brow, and acupuncture needle in your foot!
Warning: The acupuncture points used in this film are not only real, they are officially recognized legal causes of death!*
Seen as historical narrative, the film gives us a good sense of how a weak central government negotiated its position in relationship to gangs of toughs out in the provinces-- and by implication how important martial arts really were.
There are glimmers of religion visible here, obviously in the notions of chaos and order mentioned above, but also by showing the importance of lineage, decisions by family heads, the cult of scholarship, hints of ghostly presence, a seasonal martial display of opera generals, medicinal herbs, and the subtle image of hell on earth as a torture chamber where human flesh is consumed (and happens to be quite tasty, ha, ha, ha).
Total enjoyability aside, the film left me wondering about censorship. It is not horror, that is clearly an illegal genre. It is mostly a violent epic comedy, and as such fits well into the old Shaw Brothers Hong Kong legacy. Perhaps it is a test of Hong Kong's right to make movies the way it used to?
Uggg! IMBD is telling me that they plan to distribute this film in the USA under the title "Dragon." Why not just title it "Lame?" it makes about as much sense.
*note: (the wordpress plug-in Explanation Point Blocker tells me I've gone over my limit!!!)
Honestly, I did not think I would make it through this book, but it kept surprising right to the end. It is well written, well organized, and has copious footnotes. But the subject matter is a form of physical-musical-theater that is only accessible to me through translations of scripts and my imagination. Since my primary interest in the subject is in finding answers to questions about the origins and development of martial arts and possible insights into the theatricality of the arts I practice, I was constantly filtering the author's ideas through that lens. Here is some of what I got:
Just how socially degraded were actors? Very. They were in a permanent caste that made them morally available for sex with either gender. Most actors appear to have been male and judging from the literature, most sex was with men. The book is full of innuendo and subtle slang, men who practice love of "the southern mode," or "the cut sleeve" (a reference to cutting one's own sleeve in order to not wake up a sleeping boyfriend.) Individual actors were role specialists, meaning that at a certain age their stage gender and style of movement was set. It remains an unanswered question whether livelong fidelity to a role was necessary to develop a high standard of skill or because they used those skills in other contexts such as fighting or sexual entertainment? A troop could be bought and owned as could individual actors, and they could be loaned out on a short term or long term basis. One could pay an additional fee to have a role played by a woman. Bonded house servants were higher status than actors, as they could marry out. Bonded servants were sometimes given training in acting. Owning an actor in those days must have been something like owning a large flat screen tv in your home is today.
Despite the strong lines of social degradation, there was a lot of line crossing which takes some time to get one's head around. Theater was everywhere. In the villages there were temple theaters and public performance spaces everywhere. Performances happening every day for a month were common several times a year in all sorts of concurrent locations. It is hard to get a sense of how common theater was or how much amateur theater there was, masked exorcism, or performance rituals, but I get the sense it was happening all the time. They had lots of stages, but all they needed to perform was a large square of red felt, and many types of performance involved the audience.
In the south around Hangzhou and Suzhou the norm was to perform on boats or barges! Readers may recall previous discussions about the origins of Taijiquan in which we posited that the technique developed from people who spent a lot of time on boats. This is a very strong explanation for the origins of Taijiquan's distinctive movement. Why it survived in and around Chen village is another question, but we are moving here from possible explanations to probable ones.
Among the literati, home theater was very common. These were big families and they would invite their friends over for shows. The actors would often double as servants, and most likely end up in peoples laps as the night progressed. The literati were obsessed with theater and theater framed all other social phenomena. The big back drop to the existence of the literati is that way more people were taking and passing the national exams than were getting appointments. To be able and capable of taking the exams and re-taking them to stay current, one had to be dedicated to the written word.
Surrounding literati culture was a constant muddle over authenticity and the theater was the obvious place to work that out. Who was really qualified? And how would you recognized such a person? Who got their position through money or connections? It was a total obsession that broke along certain lines that permeated the theater and real life. An actor could at least play a government official on stage, the vast numbers of 'qualified' literati who never even got an appointment could look on with envy.
Illusion vs. disillusion was the dominant dichotomy. Is this my authentic identity or am I acting? Is this play more ethically or emotionally real than the people I interact with socially or career-wise? You get the idea. These kinds of questions are quite modern, and are an endless source for art and debate. Anyone who has spent an hour looking at martial arts videos on Youtube knows that the dominant dichotomy there is Real vs. Fake. Is this real? Would it work in a street fight? Is it an authentic lineage? etc. etc. etc..ad nauseum. The difference between our modern notions and those of the 17th Century is that those guys were not so arrogant as to think they could actually get to some place called "real." They thought the best they could do was to oscillate between illusion and disillusion. Disillusion in the martial arts is like, "whoa dude, that technique looks so powerful but it like totally failed against a non-compliant opponent." Illusion is like, "l guess I'll have to buy that video of totally awesome street tested combat techniques after all...that'll make me top dog for sure." It's just my opinion, but I believe photos and video have played a huge role in changing our relationship to what is "real," in all realms, but especially in martial arts where even though it is still easy to fake or "throw" a fight, slow motion instant replay of Mixed Martial Artists "grounding and pounding" each other is a potent illusion.
It's fascinating, the debates we are having today about martial arts have a lot of similarities to the debates they were having about theater. Is spontaneity better than precise instruction? Does authentic passion make us better fighters, or better teachers? Does vernacular language have something to teach formalism? Think of this one in terms of the constant tension between rough experience and refined lineage. Is refinement better than vulgarity? And this one I love, is the spectator's ability to see, recognize and appreciate great art the true measure of a life worth living?
If the physical training for martial arts is a super set, or a subset, of training for the theater then naturally we would want to compare martial arts training manuals with theater training manuals. As readers are no doubt aware, there aren't a whole lot of martial arts training texts, or even poetic martial texts, before the 20th Century. (By the way, I would like to see a complete list if anyone has such a thing.) But at least martial training manuals do exist, even if they are mixed up with talisman, chanting, and images of god/heroes from the theater. As for theatrical training manuals, they do not exist at all.
We have all heard reasons why martial arts training was secret, but we are unprepared to explain why theater training would be even more secret. Is it because if you know how to act you can impersonate anyone? Including gods, demons and government officials? A good skill set must have had promising commercial value given adoring literati and the widespread use of "opera" as a part of village ritual calenders, but the complexity of the social contract also makes the commercial value of those skills hard to assess.
As far as martial skills among actors, the book gives us no direct insights. But it is interesting to speculate that if they were debating illusion vs. disillusion as much as they were, was the same debate happening among people of the fist? I believe Douglas Wile has commented on this to the effect that generals didn't want troops with martial arts training because it interfered with infantry skills. These debates could well have been taking place. How often have we though, "I've been practicing these great skills but since I never get in fights, what use are they?" Even in the military, a great fighter could be picked off with a cheap crossbow. Who is going to respect true skill? Where would it be recognised or even criticized if not on the stage? (Susan Naquin has described numerous types of staged fighting as entertainment in her book on pilgrims.) It seems probable that in some places there were regular festivals where people could share, test and display their amateur arts and get recognition for their skills.
Other thoughts:
It is pretty common for a play to start with a martial display or a fight. Even "civil" plays about gender bending love things, like the one translated in the appendix, start with soldiers and troops marching around.
The wine shop was a very popular place to see theater, it seems particularly informal such that on a whim you could hire someone to perform at your table. I've written about the role of martial arts and banquets elsewhere, it's just worth noting that wine shops were a focal point for theater.
She discusses the dichotomy, familiar to most martial artists, between xing and shen. That is form vs. spirit. Interestingly, in the aesthetics of the time, things alike in spirit were considered "internal likenesses," while things alike in form were considered "external likenesses."
She discusses xu (fake/empty) as a key concept in the theater.
There is a category of plays which posits that, if most of our experience is an illusion, then can cultivating a strong relationship to theatrical illusion be a deeper form of authenticity?
A number of new scholarly books on martial arts have come across my desk in the last month. This field is in its infancy and I am exited to be part of the project of defining and inspiring it. In that spirit, there is much in these works to praise, much to criticize, a yawn here and there, and a few things that need to be stopped dead in their tracks.
So this is the fourth of a series in which I will discuss individual essays within larger works. The following essays are from a collection edited by Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth titled, Martial Arts in the Modern World (Praeger, 2003).
First order of business: Is Gina Carano, the star of the new film Haywire, a feminist? Gina has been a star of the MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) World for the past several years, she is hot, and she is now a Hollywood action star who is capable of doing her own stunts and fight choreography. We'll get back to that.
"Women's Boxing and Related Activities: Introducing Images and Meanings," is an essay by Jennifer Hargreaves that delves into the cultural nuances of women and fighting. She does a good job of covering all the cases, begining with an excellent history of women in the ring actually knocking each other bloody for money, all the way to the porno version of boxing done by strippers. Is it masculine? Is it feminine? Is it a special case? Are they champions? are they exploited fools? are they happy subordinates? are they victims or makers of their own fate? Some female boxers in every case love it, some hate it. Some are in it for dominance, some for money, some for excitement, some do because they crave risk, some seek health, some do it to look beautiful, some do it and find peace. Self image? It's all over the map too. Hargreaves attempts to apply every post-colonial, feminist, cultural criticism she can find to the actual situation and history of women's boxing. The result? Not a single theory is consistent with reality.
I have read way too much theory in my life. My fear is that even though Hargreaves (and many others, Richard Rorty comes to mind) have the honesty after years of studying post-colonialism, feminism, and critical theory to acknowledge it is faulty--people have invested so much time and university money in it, that it will live on as a ghost, haunting us to our graves. I hope not.
My Great Grandmother was a prominent suffragette in New York. As my Grandmother explained it to me, "If there was something that boys were good at, I wanted to prove that I could be good at it too." I stand with my Grandmother on this one, it is wrong to put obstacles in the way of women trying to do whatever it is they want to do just because of their gender. In the end, that is the only feminist idea that has any merit.
As for the film Haywire in theaters at the moment, it is a parody of b-movies which are vehicles for an action star. If you go to the late show, sneak in a six-pack of beer and talk during the talking parts, you'll freakin' love it!
Scott Park Phillips
A place to train and learn about traditional Chinese martial arts, which are a form of religious theater combined with martial skills.
What are the uses of emptiness?
al criticism she can find to the actual situation and history of women's boxing. The result? Not a single theory is consistent with reality.