actor. Itâs the most accurate key for recalling an event, a person, a place or mostimportantly a state of being.â As he spoke he felt an odd resistance. In his mind? He thought so. Then the thought came clean. We apparently only use between 12 and 13 percent of our mindâs capacity. Whatâs the rest for? Evolution never creates gratuitously. Backup systems sure, but not excess. Useless limbs fall off. Things without function disappear. Still thereâs a full 87 to 88 percent of the brain that is never used. Why? Then he thought of the Rothko Chapelâof the paintings there. Were these visions drawn from the other 87 percent? Visions of the rest? Perhaps portals to the rest. A path to the rest?
âCan you go over the keying thing again?â Tinnery asked.
Her question brought him back to the present. âOkay. So I used to work for a theatre in Indianapolis, Indiana, for a fabulous director named Tom Haas. And because I was the only Canadian director he knew, he found it fun to always offer me really American American plays.
âWell, he wanted me to direct the one Eugene OâNeill fun play, Ah, Wilderness! , which centres on a fifteen-year-old boy getting his first kiss on the dock from a sixteen-year-old girl in the moonlight at the end of a long summer.
âSo he sent me his offer on this fabulous rice paper stationery that they always used. I think the company was a sponsor of the theatre. And in the offer was a request for me to come to Indianapolis and audition this real fifteen-year-old boy for the lead.
âWell, I trusted Tom, so I hopped on an airplane and headed out. And sure enough the boy was blond, blue eyed, had good shoulders and could repeat well enough, so I agreed.
âThen Tom wanted me to cast a real sixteen-year-old girl from Indiana, but I refused, telling him that I would go back to New York and get what we, at the time, openly referred to as a midget. A twenty- or thirty-year-old actress who was small enough to get away with playing teenagers on the stage. Every director I knew had a few midgets he used. And I had a few so I got in touch with one of them and in two weeks she and twelve other New York actors piled onto a plane and we headed out to Indiana.
âWell, that first night as we sat around the table to read the playit became obvious that this fifteen-year-old boy from Indiana was really quite struck by this thirty-one-year-oldâand very sexually activeâactress from New York City.
âSo much so that every time we rehearsed the scene on the dock leading up to the kiss we would stop just before the kiss and jump to after the kiss.
âWe did it for weeks.
âThen one day the scene was on its feet and the stage manager came in and put one of those beautiful pieces of rice paper on the table in front of me.
âIt said, âYour father called.â
âWell, it was before long distance was cheap and my father never called so I was emotionally out of the room when I heard the actress shout, âDecker, Decker!â
âAnd I looked up and they had done the kissâand the boy had fainted dead away in her arms, and she was holding him.
âWell, it was an interesting moment for me. It was the very first time in my life that I realised that I was no longer young. That I would never again feel the glory that boy felt kissing that girl. And I can get that incredibly complex left-handed primary state of being by just saying the words ârice paper.â
âThe rice paper had nothing to do with the event. But the rice paper was the tactile key to open the door to the event.â He paused. The portal, the path to the event, he thought.
âDid the rice paper have a smell to it?â Tinnery asked.
Decker just smiled and told her to get her scene partner. âTime to act.â
And even as he directed her through her first scene, the two of them had connected. Although she played lover/lover to her
âCan you go over the keying thing again?â Tinnery asked.
Her question brought him back to the present. âOkay. So I used to work for a theatre in Indianapolis, Indiana, for a fabulous director named Tom Haas. And because I was the only Canadian director he knew, he found it fun to always offer me really American American plays.
âWell, he wanted me to direct the one Eugene OâNeill fun play, Ah, Wilderness! , which centres on a fifteen-year-old boy getting his first kiss on the dock from a sixteen-year-old girl in the moonlight at the end of a long summer.
âSo he sent me his offer on this fabulous rice paper stationery that they always used. I think the company was a sponsor of the theatre. And in the offer was a request for me to come to Indianapolis and audition this real fifteen-year-old boy for the lead.
âWell, I trusted Tom, so I hopped on an airplane and headed out. And sure enough the boy was blond, blue eyed, had good shoulders and could repeat well enough, so I agreed.
âThen Tom wanted me to cast a real sixteen-year-old girl from Indiana, but I refused, telling him that I would go back to New York and get what we, at the time, openly referred to as a midget. A twenty- or thirty-year-old actress who was small enough to get away with playing teenagers on the stage. Every director I knew had a few midgets he used. And I had a few so I got in touch with one of them and in two weeks she and twelve other New York actors piled onto a plane and we headed out to Indiana.
âWell, that first night as we sat around the table to read the playit became obvious that this fifteen-year-old boy from Indiana was really quite struck by this thirty-one-year-oldâand very sexually activeâactress from New York City.
âSo much so that every time we rehearsed the scene on the dock leading up to the kiss we would stop just before the kiss and jump to after the kiss.
âWe did it for weeks.
âThen one day the scene was on its feet and the stage manager came in and put one of those beautiful pieces of rice paper on the table in front of me.
âIt said, âYour father called.â
âWell, it was before long distance was cheap and my father never called so I was emotionally out of the room when I heard the actress shout, âDecker, Decker!â
âAnd I looked up and they had done the kissâand the boy had fainted dead away in her arms, and she was holding him.
âWell, it was an interesting moment for me. It was the very first time in my life that I realised that I was no longer young. That I would never again feel the glory that boy felt kissing that girl. And I can get that incredibly complex left-handed primary state of being by just saying the words ârice paper.â
âThe rice paper had nothing to do with the event. But the rice paper was the tactile key to open the door to the event.â He paused. The portal, the path to the event, he thought.
âDid the rice paper have a smell to it?â Tinnery asked.
Decker just smiled and told her to get her scene partner. âTime to act.â
And even as he directed her through her first scene, the two of them had connected. Although she played lover/lover to her
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