I wear the uniform of the Alexander teacher. I wear the little hat and the fringes. I have the Alexander name. I abstain from the forbidden foods and observe the sacred holidays.
Despite my joy in playing dress-up, when the rubber hits the road, I’m pretty slovenly in upholding the sacred precepts of observation, inhibition and direction.
When I didn’t have a job, it was easy for me to lie on my back in active rest and to listen to learned Robert Rickover discourses and to imagine that I was pretty much the epitome of the F.M. Alexander way.
Then I took a job. A real job. Not an Alexander job. A job in the real world doing worldly things with worldly people. And then how quickly did I forget to inhibit. How quickly and unthinkingly did I respond to stimuli and soon I was regaling people with tales of my life in the industry and how I worked with all the legends and the time the director told me to give him a FIP and instead I gave him the real thing.
I had a teacher who said I was just looking for a way to identify myself in the universe. I wasn’t the real deal. I didn’t walk the talk. Sure, I took days off commemorating the Work’s birth, death and resurrection, but in my day to day behavior, I did not exhibit the grace that goes with the uniform.
I don’t have much of a core, so I grasp for traditions to steady myself and in the process despoil everything good I touch.
