I N T R O D U C T I O N
Katie Rubin is an actress in her mid-thirties, living and working as a teacher, actor, writer, and director in Los Angeles. She is a practicing Sufi. She was born in Miami and earned an MFA in Acting from UC Davis. We met through mutual friends in Los Angeles and worked together in several capacities; as fellow actors, as writer/producer, and as director/actor. This interview took place in the early summer of 2012 via Skype.
JW: Why don’t we start at the beginning? When was the first time you found yourself interested in or suddenly performing as an actor?
KR: Let’s see. My mom was always thorough in terms of trying to get me to do all kinds of extracurricular things—tennis, piano lessons, voice lessons, choir, and eventually an acting class. She took me once to an adult acting class and they let me in. And what I remember is feeling a suddenly overwhelming seen and existent. I remember that experience as one of my first spiritual experiences. I suddenly was very present when I was on stage speaking and people were watching. It was almost an experience of fully dropping into my body all of a sudden, as if I had never been in my body prior to that moment. At that time, I wouldn’t have known to phrase it that way. At that same time and when I was even younger, I had this thing I would do privately where I would sit in the bathroom and stare at myself in the mirror. I would be looking into my own eyes and waiting for this particular experience to happen, and it was the same experience that would happen in that acting class. I would stare at myself and it would be this feeling of vagueness and then all of a sudden something would happen if I just waited long enough in the staring if I would just get present with myself. At the time again, I didn’t have words for that. I would suddenly be there and it was so intense for me to be there that I would suddenly check back out. I thought it was some secret magical power I had and something I might get in trouble for, so I wouldn’t tell anyone. I felt like I was bad for doing it. I had shame around it.
JW: [Laughs]
KR: It’s interesting to me that it was the same experience in the acting class. Looking back now retrospectively, I would say there was a lot of trauma that happened for me at a very young age, like infant age. I think my psychological interpretation of it was that it was too painful for me to be in my body as a kid. I found these ways suddenly-this mirror thing, acting, singing… I was in a professional touring children’s choir. I’ve always been a singer. Singing did it to a certain degree. Soloing totally did it. It’s that thing of just being seen that would force me to get here. Skipping way ahead, something I struggle with these days, lately as a performer and as a human, is that I don’t feel as much of a need to be seen anymore. It challenges me as a performer. My egoic need to be seen is not so strong, so I’m rediscovering… my fate to be on the stage. I’m finding reasons but it’s been really challenging. For a long time, it was that need to be seen that drove a lot of it.
KR: Let’s see. My mom was always thorough in terms of trying to get me to do all kinds of extracurricular things—tennis, piano lessons, voice lessons, choir, and eventually an acting class. She took me once to an adult acting class and they let me in. And what I remember is feeling a suddenly overwhelming seen and existent. I remember that experience as one of my first spiritual experiences. I suddenly was very present when I was on stage speaking and people were watching. It was almost an experience of fully dropping into my body all of a sudden, as if I had never been in my body prior to that moment. At that time, I wouldn’t have known to phrase it that way. At that same time and when I was even younger, I had this thing I would do privately where I would sit in the bathroom and stare at myself in the mirror. I would be looking into my own eyes and waiting for this particular experience to happen, and it was the same experience that would happen in that acting class. I would stare at myself and it would be this feeling of vagueness and then all of a sudden something would happen if I just waited long enough in the staring if I would just get present with myself. At the time again, I didn’t have words for that. I would suddenly be there and it was so intense for me to be there that I would suddenly check back out. I thought it was some secret magical power I had and something I might get in trouble for, so I wouldn’t tell anyone. I felt like I was bad for doing it. I had shame around it.
JW: [Laughs]
KR: It’s interesting to me that it was the same experience in the acting class. Looking back now retrospectively, I would say there was a lot of trauma that happened for me at a very young age, like infant age. I think my psychological interpretation of it was that it was too painful for me to be in my body as a kid. I found these ways suddenly-this mirror thing, acting, singing… I was in a professional touring children’s choir. I’ve always been a singer. Singing did it to a certain degree. Soloing totally did it. It’s that thing of just being seen that would force me to get here. Skipping way ahead, something I struggle with these days, lately as a performer and as a human, is that I don’t feel as much of a need to be seen anymore. It challenges me as a performer. My egoic need to be seen is not so strong, so I’m rediscovering… my fate to be on the stage. I’m finding reasons but it’s been really challenging. For a long time, it was that need to be seen that drove a lot of it.
T R A I N I N G
JW: So, did you go train at some point? When were regular performances starting to happen for you?
KR: Well, so let’s see… I did nothing through high school. In high school, I was a writer and a singer. I went to college and almost the first day that I got to campus, I went to see the improv group perform. They happened to be brilliant performers and they were working with really powerful group mind energies. They were really good improvisers. I recognize it now. I watched them and I instantly knew. I instantly knew. My thought on the first day on campus was, that’s what I do and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to know those people. Here I go. I talked to someone in the group after and I was like, “Hi. How do I do this?” and they were like, “You have to audition.” So I did. I think there were two freshmen that got in. It was a big deal for me. I was very excited. From moment one in college I took an acting class and it never stopped after that. I felt absolutely at home. I felt like I naturally understand how to do it. I would go into acting class and they would say things that were conceptual ideas and I would be like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah; I know that. You don’t have to teach me that. I know that already.” So that felt like home. I sort of intuitively already knew those things. I haven’t stopped since.
JW: So, you joined the improv troop. What kind of style or what were their influences? Was there a school like Second City style to it?
KR: Pretty much. Del Close, Follen and Second City. All the improv games. We did Harold. We did long form.
JW: Comedy Sports?
KR: I don’t know what exactly that term “Comedy Sports” actually refers to. I’ve heard that in the professional world. What does that mean exactly?
JW: In some ways I think some improv shows are set up as games and little competitions between two sides.
KR: Oh. We didn’t do that.
JW: And you were working in traditional acting classes at the same time?
KR: Yes, I was in acting classes. I was in playwrighting classes. I was writing material. I was on stage doing shows.
JW: Was this at UC Davis?
KR: No, this was at Amherst College, in Western Massachusetts.
JW: And that was undergrad. Did you go to grad as well?
KR: I did. I got an MFA from UC Davis.
JW: UC Davis. Right. What kind of training is that?
KR: Crappy. [Laughs]
JW: Why was it crappy for you?
KR: It’s not entirely true. There were some parts that were not crappy. There was a class in particular that was quite brilliant in the choreography department. There was this teacher who was this wonderful woman named Ella Davidson who actually just died very recently and frankly in my opinion, very young. She was in her early 60s but she had cancer. I just learned this. Anyway, she taught this incredible class that was called the Core class. Basically, the intention of the class was to get us to all create original material not in the traditional way. She did a lot of body based stuff with us intended to generate material on the feet. It was incredibly bonding for us personally as a group. It was really challenging. It really challenged me. I know it challenged everybody. My challenge with it is that I’ve always been…I look at it this way- because of the trauma I experienced as a young person, I had a very strong need for control and was constantly trying to control everything. Still, I struggle. That’s a pattern for me. I was also equally if not more interested in loss of control. I was swinging back and forth between those two worlds, probably ever since. This need to contain it all and blow it all up. The Core class was a very difficult and wonderful way to play with all that kind of energy. I’ve always been a theater performer who has always liked a little structure. I like there to be a narrative, a world we are living in, the rules of the world to make some kind of sense even if they don’t make sense logically, I’d like them to make sense inside of their own context. I don’t like when things on stage are inconsistent in terms of the world. Like if we are in Space, and then let’s be in Space. Let’s not be in Space and then on the Moon and we don’t know when we are transitioning between one thing and then another. I like things to be delineated. In this process, there was a lot of choreographic influence in the process. There was a lot of narrative, nonlinear shit we were doing. It forced me to embrace that and run with that. In my mind, in the imaginable realm, I’m very comfortable with boundarylessness. I love it. It fascinates and excites me. I found it hard for me in my body to go there because of this terror that had lived in my body for so long. So that class was very valuable, but the acting department was just nothing. There was a guy there that wasn’t well as a human and classes were thin, and they were still figuring it out. Basically, we could make it what we want and get paid to hang out and make shows and they paid us to teach undergrads. So really it was fucking great.
JW: So, in a lot of ways you got some really good tools in generating your own theater material but you didn’t get a traditional acting training. Is that what you mean by “it was really shitty?”
KR: They tried, but it wasn’t effective. These days I find when I’ll do a show, like I just did that show in Sacramento, I learned all kinds of shit about acting from a friend of mine who went to A.C.T. He was like, “You can do this, this, and this; and break apart the script in this way.” That’s useful.
JW: So, Davis, at that time, you knew was dissatisfying? Did you know where you were going to go after that—this is where I am going next and this is who I want to be?
KR: No, it was dissatisfying, but when I look back at it for me personally, in terms of my development as a person, it probably was the place for me. Had there been much more structure or had it been a traditional…I don’t know, who can say or speculate. It was just structured enough that I could grow as a person. I was early in sobriety then, AA sobriety, so I was maybe three years into sobriety then when I went to grad school, maybe four years. I look back it now and feel it was just right. It was a soft place for me to land for a couple of years so I could do the AA thing and still make work and grow as an artist. I don’t know if I could have handled something more intensive at that point.
JW: Yeah.
KR: At the time I was complaining about it. This needs to be more of a training program and there needs to be a showcase at the end.
JW: you go on and train yourself in some other way after that or have you just gone to work?
KR: It’s interesting timing, this conversation, because just now I feel like I’m back in some kind of training mode. After grad school, I just started working and doing my solo shows a lot and touring them. I got my equity card that way and then started doing regional theater a lot. Then I went to healing school somewhere in there and actually finished this past June. After healing school, I was so profoundly altered internally by that process that I find myself just now emerging out of that world and going I’m not sure who I am as a performer anymore because I’ve changed as a person. So I’ve been seeking out private coaching. I want my creative work to more accurately reflect who I’ve become internally because there has been a kind of disconnect between those two places. I realize now that I’ve been leaning on defensive strategies I’ve built early on as a result of my personal stuff. Acting wise, those defensive strategies are not so much in place in my personal life, but they would show up anyway on stage. I’m now stripping that away and going what is it to be just this vulnerable and open person on the stage without all the bells and whistles. I’m a pretty broad, big, entertaining kind of performer and I can get away with that and people clap for it because they don’t know very much. [Laughs].
JW: [Laughs]
KR: That sounds really arrogant. Anyone who does know anything…like anytime I have a friend I trust in the audience…in the last couple of years I get really nervous because I know they can see me tap dancing for it, pushing a little bit or a lot. I sort of recently really came around to that and went, “Okay. I’m done with that. I’m going to use those skills when they are appropriate. The comedic big broad, there is an awesomeness to that, but there is a lot of time when that’s not being asked of me. I’m just now in my development as a performer recognizing that and dropping it all. I want to do dramatic roles all of a sudden. You know how it is. When you are open to something, the universe shows it to you in a million directions. Like every audition I’m going to or every director I’m meeting, people are saying, “Can you do that again and do less?” [Laughs].I’m like, “Okay, yeah.” I do it and it’s riveting for everyone. In my brain I think it’s going to be terribly boring if I do less.
JW: Yeah, fear that “nothing is happening”…
KR: Well, so let’s see… I did nothing through high school. In high school, I was a writer and a singer. I went to college and almost the first day that I got to campus, I went to see the improv group perform. They happened to be brilliant performers and they were working with really powerful group mind energies. They were really good improvisers. I recognize it now. I watched them and I instantly knew. I instantly knew. My thought on the first day on campus was, that’s what I do and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to know those people. Here I go. I talked to someone in the group after and I was like, “Hi. How do I do this?” and they were like, “You have to audition.” So I did. I think there were two freshmen that got in. It was a big deal for me. I was very excited. From moment one in college I took an acting class and it never stopped after that. I felt absolutely at home. I felt like I naturally understand how to do it. I would go into acting class and they would say things that were conceptual ideas and I would be like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah; I know that. You don’t have to teach me that. I know that already.” So that felt like home. I sort of intuitively already knew those things. I haven’t stopped since.
JW: So, you joined the improv troop. What kind of style or what were their influences? Was there a school like Second City style to it?
KR: Pretty much. Del Close, Follen and Second City. All the improv games. We did Harold. We did long form.
JW: Comedy Sports?
KR: I don’t know what exactly that term “Comedy Sports” actually refers to. I’ve heard that in the professional world. What does that mean exactly?
JW: In some ways I think some improv shows are set up as games and little competitions between two sides.
KR: Oh. We didn’t do that.
JW: And you were working in traditional acting classes at the same time?
KR: Yes, I was in acting classes. I was in playwrighting classes. I was writing material. I was on stage doing shows.
JW: Was this at UC Davis?
KR: No, this was at Amherst College, in Western Massachusetts.
JW: And that was undergrad. Did you go to grad as well?
KR: I did. I got an MFA from UC Davis.
JW: UC Davis. Right. What kind of training is that?
KR: Crappy. [Laughs]
JW: Why was it crappy for you?
KR: It’s not entirely true. There were some parts that were not crappy. There was a class in particular that was quite brilliant in the choreography department. There was this teacher who was this wonderful woman named Ella Davidson who actually just died very recently and frankly in my opinion, very young. She was in her early 60s but she had cancer. I just learned this. Anyway, she taught this incredible class that was called the Core class. Basically, the intention of the class was to get us to all create original material not in the traditional way. She did a lot of body based stuff with us intended to generate material on the feet. It was incredibly bonding for us personally as a group. It was really challenging. It really challenged me. I know it challenged everybody. My challenge with it is that I’ve always been…I look at it this way- because of the trauma I experienced as a young person, I had a very strong need for control and was constantly trying to control everything. Still, I struggle. That’s a pattern for me. I was also equally if not more interested in loss of control. I was swinging back and forth between those two worlds, probably ever since. This need to contain it all and blow it all up. The Core class was a very difficult and wonderful way to play with all that kind of energy. I’ve always been a theater performer who has always liked a little structure. I like there to be a narrative, a world we are living in, the rules of the world to make some kind of sense even if they don’t make sense logically, I’d like them to make sense inside of their own context. I don’t like when things on stage are inconsistent in terms of the world. Like if we are in Space, and then let’s be in Space. Let’s not be in Space and then on the Moon and we don’t know when we are transitioning between one thing and then another. I like things to be delineated. In this process, there was a lot of choreographic influence in the process. There was a lot of narrative, nonlinear shit we were doing. It forced me to embrace that and run with that. In my mind, in the imaginable realm, I’m very comfortable with boundarylessness. I love it. It fascinates and excites me. I found it hard for me in my body to go there because of this terror that had lived in my body for so long. So that class was very valuable, but the acting department was just nothing. There was a guy there that wasn’t well as a human and classes were thin, and they were still figuring it out. Basically, we could make it what we want and get paid to hang out and make shows and they paid us to teach undergrads. So really it was fucking great.
JW: So, in a lot of ways you got some really good tools in generating your own theater material but you didn’t get a traditional acting training. Is that what you mean by “it was really shitty?”
KR: They tried, but it wasn’t effective. These days I find when I’ll do a show, like I just did that show in Sacramento, I learned all kinds of shit about acting from a friend of mine who went to A.C.T. He was like, “You can do this, this, and this; and break apart the script in this way.” That’s useful.
JW: So, Davis, at that time, you knew was dissatisfying? Did you know where you were going to go after that—this is where I am going next and this is who I want to be?
KR: No, it was dissatisfying, but when I look back at it for me personally, in terms of my development as a person, it probably was the place for me. Had there been much more structure or had it been a traditional…I don’t know, who can say or speculate. It was just structured enough that I could grow as a person. I was early in sobriety then, AA sobriety, so I was maybe three years into sobriety then when I went to grad school, maybe four years. I look back it now and feel it was just right. It was a soft place for me to land for a couple of years so I could do the AA thing and still make work and grow as an artist. I don’t know if I could have handled something more intensive at that point.
JW: Yeah.
KR: At the time I was complaining about it. This needs to be more of a training program and there needs to be a showcase at the end.
JW: you go on and train yourself in some other way after that or have you just gone to work?
KR: It’s interesting timing, this conversation, because just now I feel like I’m back in some kind of training mode. After grad school, I just started working and doing my solo shows a lot and touring them. I got my equity card that way and then started doing regional theater a lot. Then I went to healing school somewhere in there and actually finished this past June. After healing school, I was so profoundly altered internally by that process that I find myself just now emerging out of that world and going I’m not sure who I am as a performer anymore because I’ve changed as a person. So I’ve been seeking out private coaching. I want my creative work to more accurately reflect who I’ve become internally because there has been a kind of disconnect between those two places. I realize now that I’ve been leaning on defensive strategies I’ve built early on as a result of my personal stuff. Acting wise, those defensive strategies are not so much in place in my personal life, but they would show up anyway on stage. I’m now stripping that away and going what is it to be just this vulnerable and open person on the stage without all the bells and whistles. I’m a pretty broad, big, entertaining kind of performer and I can get away with that and people clap for it because they don’t know very much. [Laughs].
JW: [Laughs]
KR: That sounds really arrogant. Anyone who does know anything…like anytime I have a friend I trust in the audience…in the last couple of years I get really nervous because I know they can see me tap dancing for it, pushing a little bit or a lot. I sort of recently really came around to that and went, “Okay. I’m done with that. I’m going to use those skills when they are appropriate. The comedic big broad, there is an awesomeness to that, but there is a lot of time when that’s not being asked of me. I’m just now in my development as a performer recognizing that and dropping it all. I want to do dramatic roles all of a sudden. You know how it is. When you are open to something, the universe shows it to you in a million directions. Like every audition I’m going to or every director I’m meeting, people are saying, “Can you do that again and do less?” [Laughs].I’m like, “Okay, yeah.” I do it and it’s riveting for everyone. In my brain I think it’s going to be terribly boring if I do less.
JW: Yeah, fear that “nothing is happening”…
MR. BURNS, A POST ELECTRIC PLAY at Capital Stage in 2015
T R A S F O R M A T I V E P R A C T I C E
JW: You briefly mentioned sobriety and you briefly mentioned the healing school. Going back, and I know the trauma is a piece of that too, this other narrative of what I would call long-term transformative practice…going back, what has been your path? I know some people go to church early on and have a spiritual life and some people leave their early thing and practice something like Zen. There are all kinds of different ways people have.
KR: I have a particular memory of…I went to an art installation museum when I was probably 16, maybe 15; and they were doing installation pieces made of light. Light was the medium. There was a lot of plastic, glass, and light. Some of my friends went there. This was before I had smoked weed. [Laughs].
JW: [Laughs]
KR: In the front there was this light sculpture exhibit and then there was this backroom that was carpeted, and then there was this pyramid that you could get inside of and hang out in. I think that room was intended as a meditation space. I didn’t know what any of that was. Again, I had that experience of walking into that backroom and going, “Oh. I know what this is. I know this world. This is me. I get this.” Profoundly got it. I imagined they were chanting in there because the energy there was light and high. People were doing some spiritual shit in there. I got it. I walked into the pyramid, and at the time I was reading a book called…I don’t remember what it was, but it was this metaphysical novel all about pyramids. There was this pyramid theme in the book. And I thought, “It’s a pyramid in my life! What’s happening?!” I got into the pyramid and just being inside of it I had a profound spiritual experience of expansion. I experienced my being expand and I felt very light and I didn’t feel dense or burdened by troubles. I felt like everything was fine for the first time ever. I felt like this expansion and after that experience I’ve been sort of seeking that again in a variety of ways.
JW: How old were you?
KR: 14 or 15.
JW: How did you end up there? Your friends took you to an art installation?
KR: Yeah. My group of friends was really creative and interesting people. I don’t know, we may have just wandered in.
JW: This was in Massachusetts?
KR: No, this was in Miami. I’m from Miami, Florida.
JW: Oh, right.
KR: Right. So that started the whole thing. I believed that all those things had already started to happen, that was just a catalyst. Predating that, I had experiences, which may sound kind of silly… My parents weren’t really around very much. My dad was an atheist. My mom was a relapsed Catholic. There was no talk about spirituality. In fact, it was laughed at and judged in my house. You were considered stupid and weak if you believed in anything beyond what is empirically obvious or proven. I would lie in my room and turn on Metallica and Led Zeppelin, and I would have glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling. I would sort of trance out. I would sort of get into little music trances and I used to think of it as going to a different planet. I loved it and it was really easy for me. I could just shut the lights off and trance out. There was something that I was looking for. Then it became drugs and alcohol, and boys. There was a conscious altering-ness to all of that. Once I found marijuana, it was my best friend. It took me to the all the places it can take you. It opened my mind and it opened my heart, and I could see new things; and there was expansion in it. I did acid, I did opium, and I did crystal meth, a lot of alcohol. I never did heroin, coke, thank god. That was all high school. Of course, I was having sexual experiences that were pretty advanced for a high schooler. Sometimes, I’ll find myself in conversations with people mentioning things, and people are like, “You were how old when you did that?” I didn’t know necessarily that it was early, but apparently it was. Yeah, and then I went to college. The drugging and the alcohol continued. Then I got really deep into theater. Theater then became my transformative place. Writing in particular was a place I could…there was a transformational process with that. It was spiritual for me. It would alter me, settle me, and expand me all at the same time. Once I got sober, then that’s where the whole thing really starts—the transformational seeking.
JW: Yeah, because it’s interesting… The pursuit of those things early on in terms of the narrative of transformation for you, was it that you were seeking some way of transforming or was it the opposite of transformation in some sense- transformation in sort of a degenerative way?
KR: Yeah.
JW: You think so?
KR: Well, I think initially I was just looking to get out of the pain of being a person.
JW: Right.
KR: You know, and I still have that tendency to how can we not experience this, whatever this is. There was that. I think parallel to that, I’ve always been a person that has been helping to my friends. I was always the friend who was having deep thoughts about what was happening for my friends. I was the person people came to talk about things and process things. I was always reading self-help books. At age 10, I started reading self-help books to understand myself and to understand how I and other people worked, and how we could become better people. I was always an arm-chair therapist that people came to. I thrived on that. While all this degenerative stuff was happening, I was also getting straight A’s and being an upstanding, doing-all-the-right-kind-of-stuff kind of kid.
JW: When you said that’s where the real transformation started, what did you mean by that?
KR: That forced me to face everything. Working the 12 steps can be a deep transformative process. Helping other people work the 12 steps can profoundly be transformative. For me, I found the limits of that world for myself and had to go beyond it. How do you go beyond it without using substances was a question for a long time? I then got into meditation. I meditated deeply twice a day for five years. I read everything about Taoism and Buddhism. I thought that was going to be a path for me for a while. I got into Christian Mysticism for a while. I had healings with a Christian mystic healer. I tried Barbara Brennan energy work. I tried to go to the Barbara Brennan School when I was early in sobriety, but they wouldn’t let me in because I was on medication, which I think is crazy. It was clearly a timing thing. When I look back on it, I would have clearly fallen apart. They were right. My psyche wouldn’t have been able to contain the depth of the work they were doing. It’s really true. I just realized that. The way I look at it is when I was going drugs and being in high school and going around and round crazy, I was also reading everything I could read. I read Hands of Light, Barbara Brennan’s book when I was 16. So I was looking already but getting sober forced me to need it, to find some transformative process, and I better do it. My body needed it to happen in reality. The long story short, the 12 steps and therapy and meditation stopped working for me at about 6 years sober. It just wasn’t taking me any further internally. I started channeling. I opened another book about channeling, and it was another experience of I know how to do this. I get this. I started channeling for my friends. I started having people come over. “Let’s try it. You ask a question and I’ll open and see what I get.” It was sort of miraculous and pretty terrifying. I didn’t understand how to expand and contract my being without breaking out. I wasn’t grounded enough. There was too much trauma in my body for me to contain all that light work. Through a really cool synchronistic series of events, I wound up at this Sufism Healing School. I had no interest in Sufism. It wasn’t about the Sufism at all. It was about my knowing it was time to get some light in my body and change me from within because working on it from the mind had stopped working entirely. I loved the story about how it all happened. I basically just wound up there and everything changed.
JW: Is that what led you to that particular healing school? Do you have a Sufi practice at this moment?
KR: Yeah. What led me there was I had reached an emotional spiritual bottom. I knew there had to be more God and more pure white light or more essential purity, truth, whatever, but I didn’t know how to get it into my body. This woman came along and said come to this workshop. I went to the workshop and I knew when I heard the guy leading the workshop talk, I knew this was the way. I was going to be able to get the healing I was looking for from this particular process and I did. It was a miracle. I use Sufi processes now and I treat people. I do Sufi healings with people and I also integrate a lot of other things. I am definitely aligned with that lineage now. Energetically, my being has now been Sufized.
JW: [Laugh]
KR: Mentally, I’m not a person who is just into one path. I’m into whatever works theoretically. In actuality, light is my favorite light and it is the one that takes me the deepest internally in terms of my transformation process. It changes me very deeply and very quickly and very effectively with a lot of love. It doesn’t jar my system as much as other practices did. For a while there, a big part of my transformative process was acupuncture. I really thought acupuncture was going to be a big part of how I healed myself. There came to be this place where my body started rejecting acupuncture entirely. I would have these really dramatic reactions to the needles. That was part of what made me realize if I’m going to these trauma places that are going to be living in my field, it’s going to have to be really gentle. Acupuncture was too invasive. It had to come through light.
JW: What would you say the intention is in your practice these days?
KR: For me, the intention is two-fold. One is to have a place to go that is pure, ground zero. For me, it’s about healing the wounds. There are two tracks of the school I went to. One track is the path where you are trying to walk closer to the “unity” as they call it. You are attempting to bring more light into your being and serve God. There is a religious component. There is this sort of personal practice that deepens your connection with the One. There’s the religious part where you are a person in the world and serve God. The school I was in was also a healing school so they taught us how to specifically direct light into your issues. For my purposes, I’m interested in the healing aspect. I was interested in walking into the light and unity. What’s fascinating is, as you do one, the other happens, which makes sense. If you were focused on just walking the path and being a really good Sufi, if you will, a lot of your issues will clear and vice versa. I intend to work it the other way. I clear my issues and as I do, I become closer to the one. It’s my experience of it. My goal is to not have trauma in my body and to be moving through the world from an open, vulnerable, present place, not clouded by distortions from the past.
KR: I have a particular memory of…I went to an art installation museum when I was probably 16, maybe 15; and they were doing installation pieces made of light. Light was the medium. There was a lot of plastic, glass, and light. Some of my friends went there. This was before I had smoked weed. [Laughs].
JW: [Laughs]
KR: In the front there was this light sculpture exhibit and then there was this backroom that was carpeted, and then there was this pyramid that you could get inside of and hang out in. I think that room was intended as a meditation space. I didn’t know what any of that was. Again, I had that experience of walking into that backroom and going, “Oh. I know what this is. I know this world. This is me. I get this.” Profoundly got it. I imagined they were chanting in there because the energy there was light and high. People were doing some spiritual shit in there. I got it. I walked into the pyramid, and at the time I was reading a book called…I don’t remember what it was, but it was this metaphysical novel all about pyramids. There was this pyramid theme in the book. And I thought, “It’s a pyramid in my life! What’s happening?!” I got into the pyramid and just being inside of it I had a profound spiritual experience of expansion. I experienced my being expand and I felt very light and I didn’t feel dense or burdened by troubles. I felt like everything was fine for the first time ever. I felt like this expansion and after that experience I’ve been sort of seeking that again in a variety of ways.
JW: How old were you?
KR: 14 or 15.
JW: How did you end up there? Your friends took you to an art installation?
KR: Yeah. My group of friends was really creative and interesting people. I don’t know, we may have just wandered in.
JW: This was in Massachusetts?
KR: No, this was in Miami. I’m from Miami, Florida.
JW: Oh, right.
KR: Right. So that started the whole thing. I believed that all those things had already started to happen, that was just a catalyst. Predating that, I had experiences, which may sound kind of silly… My parents weren’t really around very much. My dad was an atheist. My mom was a relapsed Catholic. There was no talk about spirituality. In fact, it was laughed at and judged in my house. You were considered stupid and weak if you believed in anything beyond what is empirically obvious or proven. I would lie in my room and turn on Metallica and Led Zeppelin, and I would have glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling. I would sort of trance out. I would sort of get into little music trances and I used to think of it as going to a different planet. I loved it and it was really easy for me. I could just shut the lights off and trance out. There was something that I was looking for. Then it became drugs and alcohol, and boys. There was a conscious altering-ness to all of that. Once I found marijuana, it was my best friend. It took me to the all the places it can take you. It opened my mind and it opened my heart, and I could see new things; and there was expansion in it. I did acid, I did opium, and I did crystal meth, a lot of alcohol. I never did heroin, coke, thank god. That was all high school. Of course, I was having sexual experiences that were pretty advanced for a high schooler. Sometimes, I’ll find myself in conversations with people mentioning things, and people are like, “You were how old when you did that?” I didn’t know necessarily that it was early, but apparently it was. Yeah, and then I went to college. The drugging and the alcohol continued. Then I got really deep into theater. Theater then became my transformative place. Writing in particular was a place I could…there was a transformational process with that. It was spiritual for me. It would alter me, settle me, and expand me all at the same time. Once I got sober, then that’s where the whole thing really starts—the transformational seeking.
JW: Yeah, because it’s interesting… The pursuit of those things early on in terms of the narrative of transformation for you, was it that you were seeking some way of transforming or was it the opposite of transformation in some sense- transformation in sort of a degenerative way?
KR: Yeah.
JW: You think so?
KR: Well, I think initially I was just looking to get out of the pain of being a person.
JW: Right.
KR: You know, and I still have that tendency to how can we not experience this, whatever this is. There was that. I think parallel to that, I’ve always been a person that has been helping to my friends. I was always the friend who was having deep thoughts about what was happening for my friends. I was the person people came to talk about things and process things. I was always reading self-help books. At age 10, I started reading self-help books to understand myself and to understand how I and other people worked, and how we could become better people. I was always an arm-chair therapist that people came to. I thrived on that. While all this degenerative stuff was happening, I was also getting straight A’s and being an upstanding, doing-all-the-right-kind-of-stuff kind of kid.
JW: When you said that’s where the real transformation started, what did you mean by that?
KR: That forced me to face everything. Working the 12 steps can be a deep transformative process. Helping other people work the 12 steps can profoundly be transformative. For me, I found the limits of that world for myself and had to go beyond it. How do you go beyond it without using substances was a question for a long time? I then got into meditation. I meditated deeply twice a day for five years. I read everything about Taoism and Buddhism. I thought that was going to be a path for me for a while. I got into Christian Mysticism for a while. I had healings with a Christian mystic healer. I tried Barbara Brennan energy work. I tried to go to the Barbara Brennan School when I was early in sobriety, but they wouldn’t let me in because I was on medication, which I think is crazy. It was clearly a timing thing. When I look back on it, I would have clearly fallen apart. They were right. My psyche wouldn’t have been able to contain the depth of the work they were doing. It’s really true. I just realized that. The way I look at it is when I was going drugs and being in high school and going around and round crazy, I was also reading everything I could read. I read Hands of Light, Barbara Brennan’s book when I was 16. So I was looking already but getting sober forced me to need it, to find some transformative process, and I better do it. My body needed it to happen in reality. The long story short, the 12 steps and therapy and meditation stopped working for me at about 6 years sober. It just wasn’t taking me any further internally. I started channeling. I opened another book about channeling, and it was another experience of I know how to do this. I get this. I started channeling for my friends. I started having people come over. “Let’s try it. You ask a question and I’ll open and see what I get.” It was sort of miraculous and pretty terrifying. I didn’t understand how to expand and contract my being without breaking out. I wasn’t grounded enough. There was too much trauma in my body for me to contain all that light work. Through a really cool synchronistic series of events, I wound up at this Sufism Healing School. I had no interest in Sufism. It wasn’t about the Sufism at all. It was about my knowing it was time to get some light in my body and change me from within because working on it from the mind had stopped working entirely. I loved the story about how it all happened. I basically just wound up there and everything changed.
JW: Is that what led you to that particular healing school? Do you have a Sufi practice at this moment?
KR: Yeah. What led me there was I had reached an emotional spiritual bottom. I knew there had to be more God and more pure white light or more essential purity, truth, whatever, but I didn’t know how to get it into my body. This woman came along and said come to this workshop. I went to the workshop and I knew when I heard the guy leading the workshop talk, I knew this was the way. I was going to be able to get the healing I was looking for from this particular process and I did. It was a miracle. I use Sufi processes now and I treat people. I do Sufi healings with people and I also integrate a lot of other things. I am definitely aligned with that lineage now. Energetically, my being has now been Sufized.
JW: [Laugh]
KR: Mentally, I’m not a person who is just into one path. I’m into whatever works theoretically. In actuality, light is my favorite light and it is the one that takes me the deepest internally in terms of my transformation process. It changes me very deeply and very quickly and very effectively with a lot of love. It doesn’t jar my system as much as other practices did. For a while there, a big part of my transformative process was acupuncture. I really thought acupuncture was going to be a big part of how I healed myself. There came to be this place where my body started rejecting acupuncture entirely. I would have these really dramatic reactions to the needles. That was part of what made me realize if I’m going to these trauma places that are going to be living in my field, it’s going to have to be really gentle. Acupuncture was too invasive. It had to come through light.
JW: What would you say the intention is in your practice these days?
KR: For me, the intention is two-fold. One is to have a place to go that is pure, ground zero. For me, it’s about healing the wounds. There are two tracks of the school I went to. One track is the path where you are trying to walk closer to the “unity” as they call it. You are attempting to bring more light into your being and serve God. There is a religious component. There is this sort of personal practice that deepens your connection with the One. There’s the religious part where you are a person in the world and serve God. The school I was in was also a healing school so they taught us how to specifically direct light into your issues. For my purposes, I’m interested in the healing aspect. I was interested in walking into the light and unity. What’s fascinating is, as you do one, the other happens, which makes sense. If you were focused on just walking the path and being a really good Sufi, if you will, a lot of your issues will clear and vice versa. I intend to work it the other way. I clear my issues and as I do, I become closer to the one. It’s my experience of it. My goal is to not have trauma in my body and to be moving through the world from an open, vulnerable, present place, not clouded by distortions from the past.
JW: So now we move fully into the last phase of these interviews I’ve been doing, looking for two or three stories of peak experiences, but often they relate to themes that are larger to that particular moment or time. That’s why going through the themes is sometimes helpful. In terms of performance, I’m doing supernormal performance, so it’s a little different. It’s not just those peak experiences but people subconsciously trying to return to these, and that’s the apex of what I’m chasing. That’s really great work, or I feel really good when I’m doing that. This is what my experience in transformation leads me to say this is my aesthetic, this is what I’m pursing in terms of an artist, what I’m trying to actualize. I’m looking for two or three stories of the kind where extraordinary things are happening or where you were demonstrating extraordinary capacities and gave you that sense of deep meaning. Is that stimulating anything?
K I C K I N G T H E A D R E N A L I N E H A B I T
KR: I used to have more of those experiences before I was all into healing, and now they are profoundly different. One thing that comes up is that I used to do a lot of solo shows. It’s just me and there’s no one else there to lean on. It’s just you and God, if you believe in that. Solo shows, particularly these days, I don’t know how I’m going to do this. I’m driving to the gig and I don’t feel like I have it in me. I’m more emotionally vulnerable and I feel so much more in my life now than I ever used to. I can’t possibly do all these seven characters and remember all these lines, and beginning, middle, and end. I feel like I can’t possibly do it. I immediately feel it. I’m convinced this time in the middle I’m going to forget everything, fall down, and have no energy- it’s not going to work out. Every single time without fail, the moment I step onto stage, it’s really like something different takes over. Even if my voice is off or I’m dehydrated, there is a thing that takes over and I don’t know what the thing is. Sometimes I think its adrenalin; sometimes I think it’s more spiritual. I’m certain it’s got to be some combination of both. Something takes over and I become this crazed, highly energetic athlete. Everything just heightens and my system just seems to go onto auto-pilot almost. In terms of doing plays, there are other people involved; it’s a whole other ballgame. Every time I do a solo show, I feel like it’s a feat of supernormal experience. Logically I just can’t understand how I am going to do it. It’s so terrifying and something takes over. It works and I don’t fully understand it. Before there was all this spiritual energy in my being, I had supernormal experiences a lot in the sense that I had the experiences of feeling transcended and fully present at the same time. Performers talk about this a lot. Being so not here and being here all at once. I understand now that the being is so expanded. It’s like being in the pyramid. Everything is open and I feel bigger than this Earth, and not even of this Earth. That used to happen a lot to me as a performer, where I felt so alive at the moment and yet bigger than living. Now, it’s different. Now it’s about how to balance adrenalin with permeability. I’m very aware of the experience of adrenalin in my body. I’m so sensitive now it freaked me out how much adrenalin I had before going on stage. I also feel like I’m not going to be able to be vulnerable in front of these people because there’s so much adrenalin. I feel like I’m going to be on fire the whole time. This brings me back to my notion of being seen. There’s something for me as an actor, and I wonder if this is common to actors in general, where the pressure of all the people watching actually helps me to drop into the places that are emotionally difficult to drop into. I feel like a lot of people who aren’t actors, when they feel a pressure; it becomes harder for them to perform or be honest or focus. People kind of shut down when they feel people are watching. For me, it’s the opposite. If people are watching, somehow the pressure is on for me to really do the task at hand. I don’t know if that addresses the question.**
JW: No, it does. Are there any recent examples of these kinds of things or extreme examples?
KR: My recent second solo show was produced in Sacramento. It’s a very difficult thing for me to do. It’s physically demanding, it’s emotionally demanding, it’s fast as hell. It should be several people playing it but I’m playing them all. There’s no A-B-A-B on one page. I have to be talking to myself back and forth, back and forth. There’s also a lot of jumping up on top of things, throwing things, and running around; and then having a deeply vulnerable experience in the middle. We only did three or four performances of it. I had the experience I was describing about the solo show thing but for this show because it’s so long, there would come a point of performing it where (it happened every single time I did it) I felt like I can’t give anymore. I can’t be interesting anymore. I can’t be entertaining anymore. I can’t push this. Then what I call the “dropping in” would happen. I would give up trying. As soon as that happened, dropping my need to do well to perform, that thing took over again. I think I want to call it like a channeling experience. I drop open, my being opened, and energy is motivating or moving me. I almost feel carried around by the face by it. It’s not hyper charged. It’s actually very calm. It’s like a down and in and expanding experience. Calming and grounding but it’s supernormal in that I don’t feel like I’m the originator of the movement. I feel like I’m being moved like a puppet and yet clearly, I have control over what my limbs do and what words my mouth says. It’s clearly this interplay of will and divine will.
JW: Did you get any interesting audience response as a result of these shows that reflected or corroborated your experience at all?
KR: More and more, I’m getting this response all the time, and it speaks of the process I’m been telling you about. For myself as an actor dropping layers of shit, just being there. Every time I drop and allow the channeling if you will to occur, people couldn’t be more positive. It’s a different kind of positivity. The putting on the funny doesn’t amaze them in the way the other thing does. Thankfully, I can’t take a lot of credit in the other thing. The only credit I feel like I can take is I usually hit a point where I finally allow it to occur. That’s the only part I have in it. I allow my body to allow what is coming through. I show up for that process to occur. I suppose other people don’t have that ability to show up in that way. I feel like it’s what I’ve been born with, I didn’t originate these things, they happened.
JW: No, it does. Are there any recent examples of these kinds of things or extreme examples?
KR: My recent second solo show was produced in Sacramento. It’s a very difficult thing for me to do. It’s physically demanding, it’s emotionally demanding, it’s fast as hell. It should be several people playing it but I’m playing them all. There’s no A-B-A-B on one page. I have to be talking to myself back and forth, back and forth. There’s also a lot of jumping up on top of things, throwing things, and running around; and then having a deeply vulnerable experience in the middle. We only did three or four performances of it. I had the experience I was describing about the solo show thing but for this show because it’s so long, there would come a point of performing it where (it happened every single time I did it) I felt like I can’t give anymore. I can’t be interesting anymore. I can’t be entertaining anymore. I can’t push this. Then what I call the “dropping in” would happen. I would give up trying. As soon as that happened, dropping my need to do well to perform, that thing took over again. I think I want to call it like a channeling experience. I drop open, my being opened, and energy is motivating or moving me. I almost feel carried around by the face by it. It’s not hyper charged. It’s actually very calm. It’s like a down and in and expanding experience. Calming and grounding but it’s supernormal in that I don’t feel like I’m the originator of the movement. I feel like I’m being moved like a puppet and yet clearly, I have control over what my limbs do and what words my mouth says. It’s clearly this interplay of will and divine will.
JW: Did you get any interesting audience response as a result of these shows that reflected or corroborated your experience at all?
KR: More and more, I’m getting this response all the time, and it speaks of the process I’m been telling you about. For myself as an actor dropping layers of shit, just being there. Every time I drop and allow the channeling if you will to occur, people couldn’t be more positive. It’s a different kind of positivity. The putting on the funny doesn’t amaze them in the way the other thing does. Thankfully, I can’t take a lot of credit in the other thing. The only credit I feel like I can take is I usually hit a point where I finally allow it to occur. That’s the only part I have in it. I allow my body to allow what is coming through. I show up for that process to occur. I suppose other people don’t have that ability to show up in that way. I feel like it’s what I’ve been born with, I didn’t originate these things, they happened.
L I S T E N I N G T O A N A U D I E N C E
JW: Do you have any stories or experiences around two different topics here- one would be around the subtle energies in performances and a sense of sensitivity to or empathy or physic connection to the people in the audience. How that shifts the performance or affects you. For me sometimes as performer, I spend too much time in their heads and not enough in mine. I’m curious to your relationship to those kinds of things now.
KR: There’s a kind of listening that I do to an audience when I’m on stage. I’m always hyper tuned to the energy I’m organically getting from the house. I’m interested in what happens to me in response to what they are getting. It profoundly affects me and it affects me night to night. I’m the kind of performer that night to night I don’t know what you are going to see. It all is going to depend on what I’m getting from the audience. Now people who watch the things I do don’t say that this is their experience. They say it is more fill in the blank. To me, it’s profoundly different. It’s interesting the disparity of my experience of it and their witnessing of it. Every single night I feel like I’m riding the wave of what they are giving me. When audiences are attentive but quiet, I hate it at first. Then, I wake up and find out what are they doing. I find those audiences are listening more closely. There’s actually more room with the listening audience to drop into really subtle places and expand further and give them more subtlety; whereas an audience that is more easily swayed, it’s like you only go so deep with that because there’s no room. The space is filled with the laughter so there’s no space to find something else. Is that answering the question at all?
JW: Yeah, a little bit. It was more like giving themes that might stimulate you (e.g. the sensitivity to the audience or extraordinary levels of communication). One woman I talked to does a certain sort of prayer before a performance that she might let her performance to be of service to the people in the audience that night. As a result, she often gets people coming up afterwards referencing those things she did, there’s no way I could have known that. There’s no explanation for me consciously deciding to tap into some sort of piece of information for that person. There seems to be a distinct connection between the source of feedback and the technique of prayer she is using in her performance. It’s harder to explain without some reference to some spiritual context of subtle energies or larger connectivity. You know what I’m saying?
KR: Totally. I do the same. I have several prayers I go before I go on and practices now. I also get audiences to write audience feedback for my solo shows. I often get the feedback where people project their own experience onto what you are doing, which is part of the point of it. I think it’s our job to hold a mirror up to society, so society gets to see itself in a different way. The things people will write to me in the feedback about how they are amazed I touched upon this theme or this point when I really didn’t touch on it at all. I didn’t intend to, nor did I, write that in the text or performance. When I’m able to be in that open place where I receive, transmit, and channeling if you will. I do find those are the times that people project more personally specific things on to performance when you give them room to do so. The way I know to give people room to do that is to be spiritually open. If I make the choice as a performer to come on with all the answers, the audience can project a certain amount on that performer but you won’t get subtleties or the depth of response. I noticed it changes upon the degree to which I am open that night. I’m the first to admit I don’t want to do it. I want to have the answers and just come on, and be open. It’s comfortable there but it’s exhausting.
JW: That begs the question, is it some sort of psychic projection or are we opening up our attention to a larger field? Traditional society doesn’t have an explanation for it. I remember one performance I did with a group and there was a sort of intention or a prayer I said or with the group (we work with sources) and we actually sourced the audience on one particular performance. They will be the source of our performance. The result was that it was the one and only standing ovation for that show. It was a very different experience, and I could feel their energy, or their consciousness was actually the fuel… a lot of times in acting we do the personalization… but this time I was actually using their material. That was a pretty radical experience. Also, in that same vein, I would choose sources for the entire performance; charge the space with a certain energy. I remember charging the space with no form once- blanked out any of the patterns that I had previously laid. I was out there having no idea what I was doing, but it was happening. Those were interesting ways for me to begin to work.
KR: I see. That’s fascinating.
KR: There’s a kind of listening that I do to an audience when I’m on stage. I’m always hyper tuned to the energy I’m organically getting from the house. I’m interested in what happens to me in response to what they are getting. It profoundly affects me and it affects me night to night. I’m the kind of performer that night to night I don’t know what you are going to see. It all is going to depend on what I’m getting from the audience. Now people who watch the things I do don’t say that this is their experience. They say it is more fill in the blank. To me, it’s profoundly different. It’s interesting the disparity of my experience of it and their witnessing of it. Every single night I feel like I’m riding the wave of what they are giving me. When audiences are attentive but quiet, I hate it at first. Then, I wake up and find out what are they doing. I find those audiences are listening more closely. There’s actually more room with the listening audience to drop into really subtle places and expand further and give them more subtlety; whereas an audience that is more easily swayed, it’s like you only go so deep with that because there’s no room. The space is filled with the laughter so there’s no space to find something else. Is that answering the question at all?
JW: Yeah, a little bit. It was more like giving themes that might stimulate you (e.g. the sensitivity to the audience or extraordinary levels of communication). One woman I talked to does a certain sort of prayer before a performance that she might let her performance to be of service to the people in the audience that night. As a result, she often gets people coming up afterwards referencing those things she did, there’s no way I could have known that. There’s no explanation for me consciously deciding to tap into some sort of piece of information for that person. There seems to be a distinct connection between the source of feedback and the technique of prayer she is using in her performance. It’s harder to explain without some reference to some spiritual context of subtle energies or larger connectivity. You know what I’m saying?
KR: Totally. I do the same. I have several prayers I go before I go on and practices now. I also get audiences to write audience feedback for my solo shows. I often get the feedback where people project their own experience onto what you are doing, which is part of the point of it. I think it’s our job to hold a mirror up to society, so society gets to see itself in a different way. The things people will write to me in the feedback about how they are amazed I touched upon this theme or this point when I really didn’t touch on it at all. I didn’t intend to, nor did I, write that in the text or performance. When I’m able to be in that open place where I receive, transmit, and channeling if you will. I do find those are the times that people project more personally specific things on to performance when you give them room to do so. The way I know to give people room to do that is to be spiritually open. If I make the choice as a performer to come on with all the answers, the audience can project a certain amount on that performer but you won’t get subtleties or the depth of response. I noticed it changes upon the degree to which I am open that night. I’m the first to admit I don’t want to do it. I want to have the answers and just come on, and be open. It’s comfortable there but it’s exhausting.
JW: That begs the question, is it some sort of psychic projection or are we opening up our attention to a larger field? Traditional society doesn’t have an explanation for it. I remember one performance I did with a group and there was a sort of intention or a prayer I said or with the group (we work with sources) and we actually sourced the audience on one particular performance. They will be the source of our performance. The result was that it was the one and only standing ovation for that show. It was a very different experience, and I could feel their energy, or their consciousness was actually the fuel… a lot of times in acting we do the personalization… but this time I was actually using their material. That was a pretty radical experience. Also, in that same vein, I would choose sources for the entire performance; charge the space with a certain energy. I remember charging the space with no form once- blanked out any of the patterns that I had previously laid. I was out there having no idea what I was doing, but it was happening. Those were interesting ways for me to begin to work.
KR: I see. That’s fascinating.
Katie Rubin in her show "Why I died, a comedy!" At The Hudson Mainstage in Hollywood in 2013
E N E R G Y W E A T H E R S Y S T E M S
JW: Or with the paratheatre work, the experience for when we come together as a group, there’s a subtle energy weather system. Like when I get there each night for Para theater, I don’t impose; I just sense and perceive the energy that’s already present in the group. Often, there is some source larger than ourselves saying “this is what this group is going to work on tonight”. My receptivity to it is what’s important. I sometimes now enter the theater in the same way. This is a kind of weird example but there’s already a lot of water here. There’s something here about the polarity of presence and absence; and that energy is already present here. Before I even arrive at work and it’s not even me. It’s as impersonal as a rainy day. I can, as a performer, energetically say that I perceive it and respond to it as if its rain hitting me, or the way I would perceive it if I was walking into that room with the pyramid. The puja that had happened there, or the devotion. There’s a subtle energy field already there. You didn’t have to make it up.
KR: It’s always there. Every person in front of me now, I experience their weather system, I like your term, profoundly. You show up and I experience what’s going on with you energetically. It’s challenging sometimes, and beautiful, on stage. The biggest challenge for me always is to surrender to it. I’m thinking of a particular performance of this last show I did where the alchemy or weather of the room was dark. There was a band playing that was pumping music through the walls. It was making people cranky. There was alcohol energy in the air. There was heaviness, and I remember spending the first couple of minutes watching the other performers in the show and surrendering to it. I don’t know that they consciously did that. I made a choice in the middle of a scene. I’m going to roll with it too. I was trying to stay out of it as a self-protective bit, because as a healer when people come into my space, I have to be fully with their process, fully with the light that’s moving through me, and in a way I have to remove myself so their process can become primary. I’m sort of situated to that. Also, I can be very protective of myself at times.
JW: It’s like choosing to not go to a pub or not to drink.
KR: Right. That night I remember thinking, I’m going to drop in, I’m going to be a part of this world. It’s here and everyone else is doing it. I don’t want to feel separate from what’s occurring here. It’s going to end and I’m going to go home. I’m going to do some clearing work later. So we definitely had group mind that night. There was a connectedness and we were in a zone together. We were all in a particular specific realm of being. When I came out of that particular show, I had to do a lot of clearing work to get myself back to what I call ground zero, where it’s just me and the oneness moving through me
JW: It’s a little bit like you are in a car going through Vegas. You realize you don’t have your own car and you can’t get out. I guess I’m going to Vegas.
KR: Yeah, I guess I’m going to Vegas.
JW: That’s an interesting thing for me too—how do I enter into those realms and fully participate and not just succumb.
KR: Yes.
JW: How do I actually work with it? It’s a little bit like a surfing analogy. This is the wave. Now what? What can I do with it?
KR: It’s always there. Every person in front of me now, I experience their weather system, I like your term, profoundly. You show up and I experience what’s going on with you energetically. It’s challenging sometimes, and beautiful, on stage. The biggest challenge for me always is to surrender to it. I’m thinking of a particular performance of this last show I did where the alchemy or weather of the room was dark. There was a band playing that was pumping music through the walls. It was making people cranky. There was alcohol energy in the air. There was heaviness, and I remember spending the first couple of minutes watching the other performers in the show and surrendering to it. I don’t know that they consciously did that. I made a choice in the middle of a scene. I’m going to roll with it too. I was trying to stay out of it as a self-protective bit, because as a healer when people come into my space, I have to be fully with their process, fully with the light that’s moving through me, and in a way I have to remove myself so their process can become primary. I’m sort of situated to that. Also, I can be very protective of myself at times.
JW: It’s like choosing to not go to a pub or not to drink.
KR: Right. That night I remember thinking, I’m going to drop in, I’m going to be a part of this world. It’s here and everyone else is doing it. I don’t want to feel separate from what’s occurring here. It’s going to end and I’m going to go home. I’m going to do some clearing work later. So we definitely had group mind that night. There was a connectedness and we were in a zone together. We were all in a particular specific realm of being. When I came out of that particular show, I had to do a lot of clearing work to get myself back to what I call ground zero, where it’s just me and the oneness moving through me
JW: It’s a little bit like you are in a car going through Vegas. You realize you don’t have your own car and you can’t get out. I guess I’m going to Vegas.
KR: Yeah, I guess I’m going to Vegas.
JW: That’s an interesting thing for me too—how do I enter into those realms and fully participate and not just succumb.
KR: Yes.
JW: How do I actually work with it? It’s a little bit like a surfing analogy. This is the wave. Now what? What can I do with it?