Reading Response (Sept 25)
The Body Keeps the Scores:
In Chapter 4, it mentions the “emotional brain” and the “rational brain”, “These muscular and physiological reactions are automatic……often well after the threat is over.” And it compares the relationship between the “emotional brain” and the “rational brain” to “the rider and the horse.” All of this reminds me of the “emotional memory” of acting skills. Although not all of these memories involve trauma, the subconscious emotional and muscular reactions mentioned in chapter 4 remind me of how emotional memory is used. On stage, we will use some techniques to remind the actors of a certain part of the memory that fits the situation and use the emotions under the memory to the stage. We often create subconscious emotional responses by stimulating our bodies with five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. For me, I think hearing and smell bring me the strongest sense of vision. Simply put, a song or the smell of someone’s shampoo. In my opinion, both music and smell can be used as a kind of memory storage. When you listen to the music or smell the smell again, you will subconsciously appear in your mind the memory that you think is the most important at that time. This is similar to THE THALAMUS SHUTS DOWN in Chapter 4: “As I’ve said, the thalamus functions as a ‘cook’…… usually terror and helplessness.” We collect memories from different parts of the body (ears, eyes, skin), and these memories are not a complete story, they exist in fragments. And we can re-experience the emotion by re-stimulating ourselves with these fragments of memory.
In Chapter 5, Van der Kolk mentions that some “little signs” we always notice during a conversation in A WINDOW INTO THE NERVOUS SYSTEM, What you are thinking, what you are feeling, and what your emotional state is can be reflected in many small signs, such as breathing, swallowing, eye contact, and the pitch and speed of your voice. In performance, the emotional state can be brought out through the adjustment of these small signs. For example, one of my teachers once told me, “It’s funny how couples love each other when they first fall in love, they seem to have an inner urge, but on the surface, they constantly suppress it and show caution and nervousness. If you play with a complete lack of love with a small couple in the first love can try to hold your breath, through the adjustment of breathing, and thus the heart rate will follow the change. The little gasps caused by holding your breath will also sound a little bit fluttery. So when acting, the body needs to adjust to the “floatiness” caused by holding the breath. This physical reaction is similar to the physical reaction that is projected by the impulse of passionate love.”
Bloodline:
This artwork looks like a scar on the earth.
The interpretation of the 2010 work Bloodline by Carlos Martiel, it was described by the artist as “Two catheters are placed in my forearms to allow the blood to flow and blend with the seawater.” In my opinion, this series of works is a subtle expression of the relationship between human beings and nature. What seems to be expressed in the pictures is that the artist is transfusing blood to the red pond of seawater, but the relationship between them seems to be that they take and give from each other. In other words, the seawater is also providing “blood” to the artist.
The reason why I claimed that these works express the relationship between human and nature is that it might do with a word we use all the time –– “construction.” We often talk about constructing cities, societies, civilizations, and so on. The construction of all these is to make the whole environment become more prosperous and more modern; but simultaneously, these constructions by human can be also destroying the whole ecology which cannot be easily percieved by human themselves. As I say, human have been contributing to the construction of the environment, but all the construction materials come from nature. Therefore, the so-called giving is a disguised form of taking.
The color of this seawater pond is different from the surrounding. Red is a color that stands out among the earth which is mainly composed of green and blue. I perosnally think that if it is looked from a macro perspective, it looks like a scar from a scratch.