According to theory, the chakras can be stimulated in various ways and each is responsive to specific colors, smells, and especially sounds. Supposedly, unhealthy chakras can be cleansed or opened by exposure to the vibrations of gongs, bells, drums, and trumpets. In movies, big emotional breakthroughs duplicate the opening of the higher chakras, and are enhanced and emphasized by climaxes in the music and action.
In evaluating story material for the Hollywood studios, I began to think about how modern entertainment plays upon the various emotional and physical centers of the body, and observed that good stories affected me in at least two organs at once, perhaps getting my heart racing with tension while making my throat choke up with sympathy for the death of a character. I needed to tear up, choke up, freeze up, or laugh it up, and the more of those physical reactions I felt, the better the story was. Ideally perhaps, all the organs of the body should be stimulated by a good story in the course of exploring all the possibilities of an emotional situation. My motto as a story evaluator became, "If it isn't making at least two organs of my body squirt fluids, it's no good."
Catharsis, discussed elsewhere in this volume, is the biggest emotional and physical trigger of them all. We may get it in small doses from almost every drama or story we see, but the big catharsis, a whole-body emotional and physical spasm that cleans out your entire system of toxins or triggers a complete change of orientation, is pretty rare. You wouldn't want to go through that disruption every day, for a catharsis usually means a radical reorganization of priorities and belief systems. But it does still happen now and then, when the story and the listener are lined up just right, and its the thing that makes so many people want to go into show business and the arts. They've felt it. In the presence of work that is beautiful and true, honest and real, something smashes you like a hammer striking glass and allows you to suddenly put your own experience into proper new perspective. You might have experienced that deep shudder of realization, a moment of profound connection with your family, your country, your humanity, with the divine, or the things you believe in. A story, once in a great while, can touch us at the deepest level, giving us a new view of the world or a new reason to live, perhaps when we are ready for that particular story to speak its truth to us. No wonder some people want to be artists and storytellers, to participate in that mystery, and create the possibility of that experience for others.
QUESTIONS
1. What sensations do you get in watching a powerful dramatic experience or a moving performance by a singer or other artist?
2. Think of a story that you particularly enjoyed or that meant something to you. How did it affect the organs of your body?
3. What symbols or tableaux are particularly moving or meaningful to you? How would you describe your feelings so someone else could experience what you felt?
4. How has your body reacted to frightening or life-threatening situations? Write a short story or short film script capturing this experience.
5. Watch a scary movie and observe how the filmmaker manipulates your breathing with editing, suspense, musical rhythms, color, etc.
6. What kind of scene stirs up the most emotion or the strongest physical reaction for you? Write a series of scenes aiming to evoke specific emotional or physical reactions — to bring a shiver down the back, to raise goose-bumps on the arms, to trigger tears or laughter.
So said Dante at the beginning of the Inferno and so I found myself at a certain passage in the journey of my life, hiking alone in the forest near Big Sur, California. I was in a dark wood, all right, and lost. I was cold, hungry, shivering, exhausted, and panicked by the thought of night closing in.
It had been a rainy winter, with storm after storm saturating the hillsides after years of drought. I felt pounded by heavy weather in my own life, and had come north to the sacred country of Big Sur to find some things I had lost: solitude, peace of mind, clarity. I felt I had failed in important areas of jobs and relationships and was confused about which way to move next. I had some decisions to make about my direction and knew instinctively that a plunge into the wilderness could give me a vision of the future to lead me out of my present confusion.
As I set out on the well-marked Forest Service trail that winds into the wild canyons of Big Sur, I noted a little sign that warned the trail was rough in spots. I expected the path to be wet and muddy in places because of the recent rains, but quickly found out I had underestimated the ferocious impact of the winter storms on the fragile hillsides. The whole mountain range was a vast sponge that was now draining slowly into the canyons, unimaginable amounts of water carving new canyons and streams. Time and again I rounded a corner to find that the trail ahead simply vanished for fifty yards because a whole hillside had washed away, trail and all, leaving a damp scar of crumbling shale and a waterfall cascading down the raw rock. The freshly exposed rock is easily broken into shards called scree that flow downhill almost as easily as water, and can be as treacherous as quicksand. I could see the trail continuing again beyond the stretch where the hillside had collapsed, and had no choice but to scramble like a crab across the shifting, slippery rock face, clinging by fingertips and toes, digging into the tumbling scree until I was back on the level surface of the broken path. It continued for a few hundred feet around a shoulder of the mountain, only to disappear again in another mudslide that had to be crossed by the finger-and-toe method.
At first this seemed exhilarating, just the kind of minor wilderness challenge that I was after. But after the third or fourth time of edging out across a sheer, unstable cliff face with muddy water streaming over me, the process began to take its toll. My arms and legs began to tremble from the unaccustomed exertion, my fingers and toes grew cramped. My core temperature dropped from repeated soakings as the cool air chilled my clothes and skin by evaporation. At times the whole hillside of yellow mud and shale seemed to be shuddering and slipping under me, flowing in a slow-motion mudslide. By the tenth crossing I was starting to get worried. The hike that was supposed to take an hour had taken three hours and there was no end in sight. I lost my footing a couple of times in the muck and barely caught myself, clinging to the crumbling rock with fingers cramped and arms shaking, knowing I would fall for hundreds of feet before I hit something solid and level.
And then, as my adventure led me around the cooler, shadow side of the mountain, I reached a vast, wet scar where a whole slab of the mountain had fallen away into a deep canyon, leaving a slanted field of jagged boulders the size of houses that would be challenging to cross. I didn't know whether to turn back or keep going. I began to measure my strength very precisely, recognizing a primal, instinctive hyper-awareness that comes when one is at the edge of death. For as I watched the sun sink into the tree-line, I felt my life energy draining, and realized I was in one of those classic California wilderness tragedy situations that you read about in the newspapers. Some fool gets himself stuck in the woods at night and falls into a canyon and breaks his neck or wanders lost for days until he starves to death. It happens all the time. Was this my turn?
With my heightened awareness I knew almost to the calorie how much energy was left in my body. I had brought little food with me, just a handful of trail mix, and had consumed that long ago, observing how the nuts and raisins instantly charged me with energy, only to send me crashing a few minutes later when I had burned them off in scrambling across the treacherous shale. How thin is the margin that preserves life. I knew that every step from now on was drawing on core reserves. I could almost see the sands in the hourglass of my life rushing inevitably down to nothing.