Trial and Error

I am building a wall around myself. To stop trying to please people. Because the Prof attacks me if I try to please him. I gave up trying to understand his exercises long ago. But part of me still wants to seem like I know what I am doing onstage. And I only fail more miserably.

Stop trying to please people. I tell myself.

I am building a wall. Not to keep people out. To keep the need to please people in. Every time the little impulse comes to placate someone else, it runs into the wall. Like a little lizard dashing right into a sliding glass door. Oops!

I go in front of the class. Well, I don’t understand this exercise. But I will do it. And I will enjoy it. I have a sort of idea of what I should do. I set my mind to consciously not try and please anyone.

I fail. The Prof says “today you get a zero. Oh, it is only Monday. Well I will give you a zero tomorrow for what you did today.”

I followed ideas of what I should look like when I do the exercise. Well that does not work.

Trial and error.

How to go onstage and not feel like a pile of shit?

Trial and error. Try again.

Go up for every exercise. Look like an idiot. Maybe, one day, I understand why I am so bad onstage.

Trial and error. Try Try Try Fail Fail Fail. Idiot Idiot Idiot.

I go onstage. No idea what to do. I build my little wall in my mind “Don’t do this for their sake Harlan. Just enjoy the damned ridiculous exercise.”

After. Someone offers to kill me with a gun. Many people in the class got shot with fake guns today after the exercise. One got machine gunned. Another got a grenade thrown at them.

The Prof turns to my killer. “No, Harlan was not so bad.”

Trial and error.