ROB: Mary Jane is going to do hers now. OK, Mary Jane and everyone else, get into your space. I think I'd like to take you into the corridor approaching the room where you must identify your father. So take a moment and get yourself there; and pick me up in the corridor, in the moment and through the senses, very close to coming into his presence. [She does not respond.] All right, let's put you just inside the door. You have just opened the door to the room where he's been held. Place yourself in the room.
Mary Jane: I'm standing in a door frame looking into a room that is completely black.
ROB: You've summarized that to a fair degree. Let's put you in that door frame and I want you literally to be the camera's eye. Look off to your extreme left, because there's a little sound. Something draws your attention. Or a bit of light to the left. You focus on that, and then swing your eye moment-to-moment back to wherever your father is.
Mary Jane: It's like looking into a cave.
ROB: OK, you understand the problem with that? Yeah. Let's see something. And if you've got to put a little more light in this room, do so. Let's just take that last step into the room; give me that motion and then stop yourself and then your eyes fall on one thing.
Mary Jane: I step into the room. I can feel my brother right behind me.
ROB: How? Let's do this: let's put you in that door frame again. I want you to take a moment and be in your body there. Now, tell me about how you know your brother is behind you. How do you feel him? Where do you feel him?
Mary Jane: I have a sense of his presence over my shoulder. [She laughs.]
ROB: What is that sense?
Mary Jane: Maybe it's a smell.
ROB: Maybe it is. Let's go back into your body there, OK? And just wait upon it. You don't have to rush answers.
Just get into your body and stay in that doorway and if that room in front of you is dark, tell me where on your body you feel the darkness.
Mary Jane: In the center of my chest.
ROB: Tell me where in your body you sense your brother. Wait for it.
Mary Jane: Behind my shoulders.
ROB: Yes, but what part of your shoulders and what is the feeling on your shoulders?
Mary Jane: A sensation of warmth.
ROB: Is there really? Are your shoulders bare?
Mary Jane: It's March.
ROB: Don't try to remember, OK? In this moment that you're inventing now, imagine it.
Mary Jane: Yes, because I'm wearing a sundress. In front, it's very cold. There's a patch of warmth.
ROB: That's good. See where your father is now.
Mary Jane: There's a spot of light in the room, almost like it's been…
ROB: Where is it first, before you tell me what it's like.
Mary Jane: It's shining intensely on his head and illuminating the casket that he's lying in.
ROB: You're generalizing now. OK, a spot of light comes from where to where? It falls from point A to point B, and in point B what do you see in full detail? Give me that in a few sentences.
Mary Jane: Where it falls from?
ROB: I just want you to see it and tell me what you see, because there is a sense of that light moving from a place to a place, isn't there? The source of light is one place — I want your eyes to go first to the bright light above, and then follow it and see something.
Mary Jane: On his face. His face is an odd ash gray color and the shape of his face is not. there's a twist to his jaw and his mouth that doesn't look anything like him.
ROB: You've analyzed the twist of his jaw. Let me see the twist of his jaw right now.
Mary Jane: The twist of his jaw, his mouth, it looks as if someone had cupped their hand around his jaw and pushed up.
ROB: OK. I want you to have a flash of memory in this moment. You see that face flash to something, some memory of that face.
Mary Jane: Well, in the moment that he died, his jaw fell open.
ROB: OK, you've just summarized that. Go from a specific, in-the-moment, concrete, sensual encounter with the face before you in the funeral home to a specific in-the-moment encounter with that other moment. I know this is tough stuff. It's tough for you personally, and the sense impressions we're getting at are very challenging in themselves, but so are they always, when you do them right. So let's back up: clear your consciousness. One more time, evoke the face in the funeral home, and then evoke the face that you saw in the moments before his death. Don't try to remember what you said; I want you to see it afresh and just be there with it. I want to get both faces from you in the same flow.
Mary Jane: His chin and his lips and his nose looked as if someone had grabbed ahold and shoved them into a mask. The face that I remember from the moment of his death is soft.
ROB: Soft where?
Mary Jane: The chin was elastic. There was still mobility..
ROB: You're analyzing and generalizing here. Let's just look at something on his face. Let's look into his eyes before he dies; look into his eyes.
Mary Jane: His eyes are almost completely closed. There's some movement in the lids, a little water.
ROB: Look at his mouth. What's his mouth doing?
Mary Jane: His mouth is partially open.
ROB: Partially, what does that mean?
Mary Jane: Half open.
ROB: Do you see his teeth, his tongue? What do you see?
Mary Jane: You see his tongue. You see his lower teeth.
ROB: What are they like?
Mary Jane: They're yellow.
ROB: Yellow like what?
Mary Jane: Like old piano keys.
ROB: What do you smell?
Mary Jane: Room freshener.
ROB: OK, but what's that smell?
Mary Jane: Flowery.
ROB: Flowery, like what?
Mary Jane: Flowery, like jasmine. In bloom.
ROB: I can't buy that one. It's trying to smell like jasmine in bloom. What's it really smell like?
Mary Jane: Actually, the flowery jasmine room freshener is not doing a very good job of covering up.
ROB: You don't have to analyze it. There is that smell but layered under it is.
Mary Jane: The smell of old sweat and intense concentrated urine smell.
ROB: All right, that's fine. Thank you, Mary Jane.
It's tough. When you focus on this detail and that— his mouth, a smell. We had some nice things there. It's easy to get spooked doing this; very quickly you become conscious of how difficult and demanding it is, and then often your response to that stress is to start forcing it, willing it. The voice in your head that I talked about a few weeks ago starts going, "Oh, that's not good enough. This isn't working, is it? Better turn it up a notch." And then it falls apart.
But look, it's this way for everybody. Janet and I struggle with the same things every day. We fight off those impulses to will this, to analyze and describe it with technique. We get the same kind of panicky feeling when it's not quite there. You just have to learn to let it go, to stay loose with it.
Even if we're not fighting off serious emotion, this is still tough, isn't it? Just moving through space in the moment is very tough, it really is — but necessary, as I hope you're convinced. All right, Brandy, do you want to do it? Let's put you on the seesaw. Things are going OK. Let's do an up and down. Can we do that in the moment?
Brandy: The air is hot against the back of my neck as it blows my hair up as I go down.
ROB: You're at the top. Let's do a slow motion, and you're about to go down. Let's start you there. Put us on that seat of the seesaw with you and bring us down. So, you are sitting where?