An Actor's Job

So, I've been reading a wonderful and provocative little pamphlet about acting and the theatre written by David Mamet. Maybe you've heard of it:

As a performer and theatre maker who has chosen to pursue a PhD in theatre, many of his sharp words about institutions, acting teachers, and educational professionals were painful. If you haven't had the pleasure of this book, he makes statements like the following:

"Formal education for the player is not only useless, but harmful." (18)

"If you want to have made a valiant effort to go into the theatre before you go into real estate or law school or marry wealth, then perhaps you should stay in school." (19)

Woof! Scathing. After 22 years of formal education and three additional certificate programs in acting, I have to say this stings. So much.

Does he doom me to mediocrity with these statements? Does he condemn my choices as non-theatrical? Does he snatch away the possibility of meaningful work as a performer?

These are the feelings that I feel building at first as I read his statements against the institutions which I have given money, time, and energy to.

But as I continued to read I also began to feel other things, chief among them a sense of freedom and validation. As Mamet talks about how theatre and acting work, I realized that his condemnation of institutions arises not from a contempt of the desire to learn, but rather a contempt of the processes which obscure knowledge behind the prestige of a bureaucratic system of professors and workshops that place and actors value in the eyes of one or three or four professors, critics, or casting agents who keep actors away from audiences.

Mamet himself believes unreservedly in the skill and courage of the performer.

Take for instance this selection [hold on tight it's a bit more than a soundbite]:

• "It calls on the actor not to do more, not to believe more, not to work harder as part of industrial effort, but to act, to speak out bravely although unprepared and frightened. 
• The middle-class work ethic: "But I did my preparation. It is not my fault if the truth of the moment does not conform." That ethic is not going to avail. Nobody cares how hard you worked. Nor should they.
• Acting, which takes place for an audience, is not as the academic model would have us believe. It is not a test. It is an art, and it requires not tidiness, not paint-by-numbers intellectuality, but immediacy and courage. 
• We are of course trained in our culture to hold our tongue and control our emotions and to behave in a reasonable manner. So, to act one has to unlearn these habits, to train oneself to speak out, to respond quickly, to act forcefully, irrespective of what one feels and in so doing to create the habit, not of "understanding," not of "attributing," the moment, but of giving up control and, in so doing, giving oneself up to the play." (32)

Ok, so this is another hard one, but there is something in it that is so freeing that I wanted to stand up and shout. Many of the theatrical authority figures I have known and much of the general buzz about the business are about auditions, proving yourself, getting an A, getting X director's approval, making sure that the critic/camera sees a great performance. But the definition of great performance was some external grading system to which actors are consistently asked to measure up to. How do we know if we've hit it? A feeling? A special nod from the director? Fewer notes? More notes? Callbacks?

Hold yourself in, Lose ten pounds, Up-endings, Vary your pitch, Make bolder choices, Find the Right Monologue

It's hard enough to break your own filter and respond truthfully to another human being in an uncertain situation and that is drama. That is theatre. Human beings responding truthfully, doing things in an uncertain situation.

This is not to say that the desire to understand, discuss ideas, concepts, contexts, and relevant materials is wrong, but rather to say that an actor's job is hard enough without making them responsible for the answers to questions which the play asks the audience.

This tips a piggy-back idea, that I'll probably put in another blog post: the Audience is not a passive reviewer passing judgement. They are a partner who connects the dots around the action of the play.

Back to the actor's job: professors, casting directors, --even sometimes directors-- who ask actors to add the answers to extra dramatic questions can complicate and ultimately make the actor responsible for the audience's job. Think about that for a second: trying to do both the job of performer and the job of viewer.  That's a mind numbing and ultimately impossible job. Success in this case is merely a fulfilling of said persons ideal dream of the character, which often says more about that person than about either the play or the actor performing the role.

But Self--my brain questions--what about fantastic roles? or non-realistic plays which require the imagination? or conceptual plays which deal with ideas? The really fun stuff.

That's an excellent question, Self.

No play is realistic [even Realistic ones] because they're played by actors on a stage and viewed by an audience. Which means that the given circumstances of the world of any play are going to be non-realistic in some way shape or form. Imagination is certainly a part of theatre and acting. A beautiful part.

Mamet suggests, however, that instead of trying to "believe" in the imaginary circumstances, we trust the playwright. Here, I include our collaborators and world builders. Trying to believe is illusive, difficult, and can lead to devastation and guilt: I'm not believing good enough. I'm not right. Why can't I just believe it? Etc. Mamet suggests that instead of trying to make ourselves believe, we accept the circumstances as they come and respond by bravely taking the next action and line that present themselves.

I don't know about you, but this is such a liberating notion for me. As a performer, an actor, an imaginer, and a person.

You don't have to have it right. You don't have to emote the correct thing. You don't have carry the weight of  believing.

You get to accept a surprising, dangerous, exciting set of circumstances and DO something with them. 

Ugh! It feels so good because it's hard, but brave. And how do you know it's done? I did it.

What did they think? That's their purview. They get to have their opinions, but if your job is definable. Ie: to tell the audience a story. You know when you did it. You can plan to do better. You can do it again.

Gah! Now I'm just devolving. Make Theatre! Tell Stories! Act Bravely! Speak truthfully! Syllable Syllable Syllable! Recorded Time is not so petty!

Anyway, I'll continue reading. More thoughts to follow. Lots to consider. Lots to validate. Things. 

Art and the Internet

An article written by William Deresiewicz for the Atlantic claims "The Death of the Artist--and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur". Through the article he takes his reader on a magical journey through the ages of different roles of artists and what they come back to is different relationships to income and criticism.

Patronage, Universities, and finally: the internet, networking, followers.

He sums up with this statement:

"When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn."

Ok. I have thoughts and feelings about this. Initially, as I began reading, I thought about how frustrating it is that as a theatre maker, an art maker, I have to learn, not only how to make my art, but also how to sell myself to people. Especially as an actor, needing to learn how to sell yourself to an Agent who will help you sell yourself to directors and casting agents, all before you get to actually do your art or your craft. While thinking this, I was with Mr. Deresiewicz. I was like,

"Yeah! The good old days when art was a craft that you pursued, and the good old days when artists rejected patrons to do their own work, and the good old days when we pursued art because we loved it. Before the wreckage of the university where we pay to be schooled out of art and love of art! Before the hollow capitalist myths said appeal to the lowest common denominator! Down with the patriarchy! Rah rah Art!"

I was very effusive.

Then I started to realize that his view of the internet age, which brings artists straight into contact with their patrons, was synonymous with breadth, therefore, a lack of depth. A lack of true engagement or interact with either the ideas, the art, or the consumer.  And that's where I hopped off the bandwagon and started to look at it up close.

In the above quote, Mr. D finally shows his true sense "Art, that old high thing . . . a vessel for our inner life". Romantic, isn't it. It's like a flag, a grand old flag, a high flying flag. I digress into nationalist territory, but the point is that he is idealizing something. Specifically, "Art" as something incompatible with the internet age in which he charges that Artists trade 10,000 hours for 10,000 contacts (which he separates from collaborators or companions who enrich art).

As many problems as I have with the vastness of the internet, its legions of corporate bots and content, and even the void into which I sometimes feel my blog posts go to die, I fundamentally disagree with Mr. D's view of the internet as a solely capitalist force leeching the soul out of art!

I think this is not only a conversation about Art but also about how we view the internet and the difference between High Art and Low Art.

If Art is the vessel for the soul, we must ask who's soul? and how is it shared? Traditionally, the vessel for the soul is the body--unless you're having an out of body experience [which could arguably be a definition for great art], however, when we talk about art that moves us or speaks to us, we talk about an expression of something felt, experience, human that we see, hear, smell, feel outside of ourselves. This is what I think he means with "vessel for the soul".  But then we get into question's of who's soul?

Whose soul is worthy to be expressed in art and how should it be expressed? In High Art/Low Art discussions this becomes important. Ie the masses don't know anything about art and therefore the art that they like can't properly be called "art". This takes many many shapes and forms, but it all has to do with separating the represented soul with value--some expressions are more valuable than others.

Here, I have a voice asking my head: "but isn't there good art and bad art? should there be a way to distinguish between truly phenomenal work and mediocre work? What objective measurements exist? Or are you saying they don't?" Tricky tricky, but related and important.--Good subject for another post, but I want to return to the internet and the way it shapes Art.

Specifically the charge that the internet sucks the depth out of art: Mr. D argues that the internet is all about the consumer "who is perforce always right"(D)--which means that in order to appeal to more consumers, the artist must diversify like a business, multiple art forms, multiple jobs, create an environment, create an experience. And all I hear is create, create, create, create, create!  So much creation. He mourns the loss of 10,000 without realizing that the continued creation of content through multiple sources is part of that 10,000 hours. He mourns the loss of collaboration, when other artists, thinkers, and collaborators are more available to each other than they have ever been! I am able to reach out "contact" artists who's work I see on the internet and start conversations about art, life, the universe, and everything.  The constant feedback of the "consumers" on the internet gives opportunities for instant information about how your art works, who it touches and how. The response from people interacting with your art is not a simplistic "make it my way". -->

"Make it My Way" is the corporate message sold by companies, universities, and institutions who are selling products, not art. They tell us that that should be the rallying cry of the consumer. They tell us that the consumer is a dumb beast who can only want and cry and whine because that's what they want the consumer to be. It's easy to sell to someone saying "GimmeGimmeIwantOohShiny!"

If you buy that lie, then of course "Art is Dead." In fact, so is culture, society, and humanity.

Bottom line is, I want to call to Mr. D across this vasty internet sea, that there are those of us fighting, arting, and spending hours to make connections and sending vessels across the internet sea containing our souls. I want to challenge him to look for us and find us connecting, crafting our art with love, filling it with life, and sharing it not only in person but also through the internet. 

"If you can imagine doing anything else..."

This morning I read a really fantastic blog post over at the Huffpost Blog: An Actor's Dilemma. In it, Bobby Steggert thoughtfully asks why, when there are such stresses, economic holes, and fallow times, does he continue to pursue a career as an actor. His answer has to do with the intimate connection that happens between audience and actors over story. The ephemeral theatrical moment. Please go read the article, because I'm not even really paraphrasing here and his post is so great!

This post isn't actually about why we theatre though. It's actually about something he brought up in the course of the article. The dreaded phrase that teachers, mentors, and actors repeat:

"If you can imagine doing anything else in life, then do it"

When I came across it, I was suddenly awash with deep anger about it as I recognized the real damage that this phrase has done. I'm going to unpack it in a couple ways. But damn. I've often had conversations about the way that actors can be (please note that not everyone is) vicious to one another. Especially when they're afraid--and telling stories with truth, vulnerability, and love can make one very afraid. Performing, working, openly with yourself as instrument leaves you very vulnerable and in a state of vulnerability is where, I believe, we do our best work. This doesn't mean weepy puddle all the time, this means open to each other and sharing with the audience. It only takes a few kicks right in the squishy, human insides, to make us cover up.  "That was your choice?" "The actor play Iphigenia was bland and failed to move me." "This production had the worst kind of overacting." "Which one were you again?" "Oh my god, I'm terrified to work with him." "I don't believe it." "She won't come drinking with us." "She's awful." "He's having trouble with the choreography." "No, you weren't cast." "No, you weren't called back." "No, don't make that choice." "No, listen to me." "No, you won't be getting paid for this." "No, your opinion of the play is not valuable or important."

Which leads to the statement, "If you can imagine doing anything else in life, then do it." Varieties include "If you can do anything else, do that."

As a fear response, a defense mechanism, is the only way this makes sense to me, especially since that is the ENTIRE JOB of an actor. To imagine themselves doing other things, with other lives, as other people. If you can't imagine yourself as a different person with different given circumstances, you probably are in the wrong line of work. Instead of weeding out those who are committed to the ephemeral power of live storytelling, this sentence gives those who do it an inferiority complex and shames those who have imaginations.

The sentence implies that if you can imagine yourself doing other things, you have no business making art. That is an impoverishing stance to take. We grow richer by sharing. The idea that only people who have no way to imagine another career belong in theatre short changes the theatre by keeping out those who can bring new blood, new perspective, and who can bring their own human lives and imaginations to the theatre. It also is a way to shame struggling actors out of the business. Instead of working together to develop skills, we ask "can you imagine yourself doing anything else? Get out."

It's a hard life and I can get behind letting people know that we are underpaid, overworked, and misconstrued as mystical creatures who only memorize hundreds of lines of text and emote nightly. However, the flip side of this sentence is that it adds to the undervaluing of actors.

The statement implies that if you are a good actor, a skilled actor, a talented actor and a career actor, you aren't good at anything else. I have met so many wonderful actors who are self-effacing, who believe the lie that they aren't smart, talented, or skilled. Who, when complimented, say "Please" brushing it off as if their negative self view has eaten up their ability to see themselves. Who treat the director as if he/she is god, while working their asses off and never feeling good enough. Actors afraid to express an opinion because they're "just an actor." This statement activates that myth by pointing at those performers and saying "they're here, they're succeeding, because they would fail anywhere else".

This grinds my gears!  Undervaluing, mystifying, and shaming actors is a good way to get mediocre theatre and to reduce the number of people who want to work there and to devalue the entire system by encouraging those who "can't take it" to get out.

As Steggert notes, actors are not only multitalented, the skills of being an actor are coveted and useful skills in other working situations.  Physical adaptability, listening, public speaking, emotional presence, learning information, tenacity, social skills, sharing with people.

As actors, we get to perform and share storytelling with our whole being. It's a gift that we give and receive. We can and should take care of each other, nurturing the skills and talents and hearts that we all possess. How can we expect other people to do that if we won't do it? What are your thoughts?

/rant

Improv Dance and Live Music

Today I attended my first Improv dance jam at the Detroit Revival Project: Improv Dance and Live Music hosted by ArtLabJ and featuring ConTempus, ArtLabJ Dance, Harge Dance Stories, Pure Existence Dance, and 5 local composers (including Marquez-Barrios and Daniel Tressel) who wrote Detroit themed pieces for this project.

It blew me away.

The compositions were marvelous pieces of music and made me proud to know that these were local Michigan and Detroit composers and musicians!

The music had been written ahead of time and rehearsed, the dancers (8 of them) heard it for the first time this morning before performing to it live this afternoon and sharing with the audience. It began with just the music as the dancers listened from chairs in the audience. Then they slowly, as they felt moved, worked their way, with chairs, into the performance space between audience and musicians.

Throughout the following musical pieces, the performers worked in duos, trios, conglomerates, and solos exploring the music and letting it inspire their physical work alone and together. I know this all sounds rather vague--to be fair, how do you explain the barrage of an hour of improvised dance and music that has, in true performance fashion, evaporated into the ether of memory??

Stories rose and fell as the dancers interacted. They weren't as clearly event driven as actors' improvisations, instead they were relationships based on feeling and movement. Mirroring was huge. Sometimes two dancers would mirror each others movements--for example, one young woman tried to manipulate the movements of another woman who was seated on the floor, she was unsuccessful in bringing the woman to her feet so she joined her, just to her left facing upstage and began to mirror her actions. Soon the two were working together to build a kind of mobile mirrored duet which then broke as they inserted separate variations and reformed and broke again as they finally moved to their feet. Another example, another young woman stood on a chair facing a group of three or four dancers stage right repeating variations on a hand raising gesture, almost as if she were speaking or directing or grabbing their attention. Behind her, another dancer began to mimic her movements, creating a tender following relationship.

The hand raising gestures were a motif that carried throughout the hour of improvised dance. While resting in chairs on the side, dancers would frequently continue this motif in variations--quick up, held up, up down up, whipped up, flopped down, both hands, one hand and the other, etc. Their hands  would often guide them back into the center of the performing space.

Two of my favorite duets were Adriel and Sam, the two gentlemen, and Adriel and Kara. Adriel and Sam played a kind of rotational duet of jumping and twirling in which their movements conversed sometimes mirroring (you click your heels, I click mine or Pa-de-chat and Pa-de-chat) and sometimes pushing each other into new actions, walking to running to turning to twirling. Eventually the girls broke in on this by crawling their way in across the stage.

Adriel and Kara began by weight sharing and carving around each other's negative space, horizontally moving vertically. They repeated a gesture in which she flew him in airplane and he pulled up from the ground onto his knees (this doesn't really describe the image--gah!). The relationship was rocky as they tried to figure out and adapt to each other's movements. Kara's slowly became more and more forceful until she was throwing him to the ground and finally walking on him and away from the duet. Adriel pushed away alone and was finally joined by Jennifer Harge, another of the female performers, and the two of them moved gently through some kind weight sharing. This soothed my heart as an audience member as well as the relational hole Kara left in the dance.

As a question: Physical offers were a HUGE part of this performance. Dancers making offers as soloists as duos and trios. Dancers accepting or rejecting offers made through the group. In Improv and in acting accepting or working with offers gifted to you is a huge part of collaboration. It's part of trust and part of best practice. Kara, and a couple other dancers, made impositional offers. Pushing other performers or entering a previously established grouping to change it or moving another performer from one place to another. It was interesting to watch the dancers respond.

Jennifer Harge was one who sank into the ground or continued her action within the imposition. This frequently created even more interesting offers because the initial offer was not rejected, but it also wasn't accepted. Jennifer created dialogue. In one piece, part of Nina Shekhar's POSTCARDS for Solo Piano (2014), Jennifer used a jerking lunge switch as a movement both in place and across the stage. Twice actors took a hold of her torso to move in another direction, as they had with other dancers, each time, instead of moving in their direction, she let her movement be made more difficult by the additional dancer. The resistance and tension this created was a powerful complement to the music, which had a jerking, atonal feel. One of the dancers who had held her let go and picked up the motion mimicking and varying it into the next set of dance motifs.

In another instance, Kara began pushing dancers out of chairs by their faces and taking their chairs to build something. One dancer began to help her push them out. One dancer kept returning to sit to make it difficult. Another dancer began to rearrange the chairs after Kara put them down. The combination of these actions was a fascinating relational story. I felt frustrated at Kara for pushing and at Sam for adding that kind of energy, but the other dancers responded with their own physical offers.

So my question then: offering and responding to physical offers. As an improvising actor, the rule is always "Say Yes" but does yes always mean "I will do what you suggest"? What kind of "Yes or Yes and" stories do you have that challenge the idea that saying yes means being a follower? How can we enrich collaboration?

The Problems in Front of You

I'm in the middle of creating and rehearsing a movement piece about reintegration. It's so far proved to be a really fascinating experience. Having studied reintegration for 2+ years, directed 3 shows about it, and presented papers on it, I am now experimenting with moving through the process with another performer.

When I finally found a song-Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd--we began to discuss it in three stages, pre-deployment, deployment, and post-deployment. We listened to the song a few times and talked through the problems of reintegration and what parts were going to go in our story. Then we began to move.

We started on the floor, thinking about the day that any couple goes through and how in sync two people can be together. The day gains a kind of routine that, while deviated from now and again, is comfortable and smooth. Without words, two people may rise and go about morning activities (especially in my case) and still be working together to prepare for the day. So the task became: how can we rise together? what else do we need to do? breakfast? dishes? reading? getting dressed?

Sometimes Adriel suggested movements and sometimes I did. We worked back and forth trying to solve the problem of getting from point A to point B to point C. The first section of the song is all about being in sync. In some ways, it's really the most challenging because the level of familiarity and intimacy that we are building is deep and this is the first time we have collaborated on a performance together. So when we have a weight sharing hold I have to trust that he won't let me fall and keep all of my energy and muscle work in a straight line.  I also have to trust that I will be able to do that.

This is one of the really cool things about this piece: we're not just dancing, we're doing physical theatre. We're not limited to one style of movement so we're using piece of mime, acrobatics, weight sharing, and dance. The weight sharing is important to the piece because it reflects the way that relationships work. If one person is holding back, the position can't be accomplished. Not being in the correct position or placement could really hurt yourself or your partner, so you have to be constantly conversing while you work through the poses. Same with acrobatics. These techniques are really useful for the subject. Especially as we move through the 2nd and 3rd sections.

In the second section, Adriel receives his deployment and leaves. This is the first time that we don't work as a unit. For the whole middle section, he has his own war zone experiences and I have my own experiences, using a chair to try to accomplish what we did together in section 1. Without both of us, this has been hard for me to figure out. Adriel gets to make up new things, but I have to figure out how to do the old ones by myself, in the time that he is doing his choreography. I have not yet figured out exactly what to do. I feel lost and bereft and have several times just wandered around the central playing space moving the chair. The chair can't weight share with me--I have tried. I can't sit in it because it's kind of standing in for him. All of our initial actions are so based on the two of us moving together that I feel hollow with the chair. I will make it work, but damn!

So part 3, Adriel comes back from the war after having killed someone and dodged several explosions. I run and jump into his arms and we spin, then coming down he drops while my arm is still around his neck and panics, fleeing from me to the chair. Next comes several attempts at recreating/creating balances and weight sharing again. These ones are more difficult because we've both been doing things apart. We have to rediscover/recreate a new way of being together. So we try a table then I fall and he pitches forward into a candlestick stand in my hands and over into a backbend. Then I pull myself up around him and remove his soldier coat. He leans forward and almost falls but I pull him back and we fall into a weight sharing plank position then lower into the chair where he melts into the floor on the other side of both chair and military coat. I melt to the other and we mirror our initial pose intertwined around the chair on the floor.

We're in the process of setting and polishing the movements. Adding stylization to our opening daily routine and to our balances and poses. The mime stylization and the energy that goes into each one is enormous. Though I think it will really make the story telling clear. At least hopefully clearer. I can't see it because I'm in it and that makes me a little nervous, but the problem solving to put together the story has been really rewarding--in terms of thinking it through with the body and collaborating with both Adriel and Todd.  Some of the symbols really hit me--like that last one with both chair and jacket between us, we still reach for each other.

Does this couple stay together? I don't know but they're certainly trying. I think that knowledge is more important to this piece than the yes or no answer. 

In an interview, Brené Brown discusses the culture of exhaustion and busy-ness which is currently equated to success for many working people in the U.S. She's referring to the (sometimes) 24 hour work schedule of checking emails, sending documents, making calls, and addressing issues which leaves very little, if any, time for being present, enjoying completed work, enjoying other people, and communing with yourself. I recognize the pressures of this culture. Those who seemingly work constantly are celebrated and looked up to, whether or not they actually are working constantly or are even happy. 

The myth/practice that value is located in production speed, volume, and consistency hurts. Especially because it disrupts and curtails free time, personal time, and celebratory time with nagging fear and anxiety--this is time I am not spending on work. This trap gobbles non-work time transforming it into anxious about work time, which Brown calls "the burden of not getting enough done".  With my dissertation, I feel this all the time. If I didn't write today, "I didn't get enough done". Counting the months until my mandated graduation, "I'm not getting enough done". I worked on a performance, "I'm not getting enough done". I made cheese, "I'm not getting enough done". I cleaned the house, "I'm not getting enough done". These are all lies that make not only day to day living harder, but they grind me down. When I sit down to work on my dissertation, the weight of all these statements piles in behind me threatening me to get more done than is possible in one sitting, just to make up for when "I didn't get enough done" before. To borrow words from the wonderful Charles Mee "It's a Vicious Cycle, It's a Vicious Cycle". 

Brown doesn't only lament the culture of exhaustion, she also offers some solutions, which are helpful. First is to "Stop, recognize, and offer feedback". Yesterday, I spent two and a half hours on chapter two, finally finding the will to dig into it after a painful period of not working directly on it. After all that work of identifying problems to solve, places to fix, and methods of fixing, my computer froze and I had to reboot. Unfortunately, I lost all the comments, highlights, and visible work. I was pretty devastated. "I'm not getting enough done and what I did get done is gone". After a long talk with my boyfriend, he asked me if it was really gone. In the conversation, I stopped, recognized the work I did and repeated feedback on it. I remembered the broad strokes. I had identified patterns of work that I knew I could do. I had even written the general outline of my comments down on paper. The work I had done was not completely lost and it had been empowering.  Reflection and feedback can be an excellent motivator. As Brown points out, "feedback is a function of respect". While she is primarily talking about giving feedback as a leader, you can perform the function on your own work as well. Reminding yourself of what you have done and how it works, evaluating your own work with a respectful eye. 

The second suggestion Brown makes is to "set boundaries around [the] work and respect them". For example, giving specific working hours or locations and leaving work within those times and/or spaces. By creating boundaries and deliberately leaving work there, you can create room for yourself to appreciate the work that you have done and enjoy yourself and the other things that make up your life without punitive thoughts based on should: i.e. "you should be working now"--No, self, we should be enjoying this snow day, this movie night, this home cooked meal, these friends. 

One of the most beautiful thoughts to me is that we are always, already present. Fear of the future (should be working) and of the past (didn't get enough done) can only distract us from the fact that we are always, already present. If I am working, I am working. If I am relaxing/making/enjoying/etc, I am doing that. It's not wrong. It's part of being a productive worker. It's part of taking care of myself so that when I am working, I can really tackle that problem. 

That said, felt, and released, it is time to work now. =)