my mind on books

Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone (Routledge, 1987)

Though I’d much rather sit in the back row than stand up in front of people doing anything, I was hooked into Impro by Keith Johnstone after reading the first page, which starts out:

As I grew up, everything started getting grey and dull. I could still remember the amazing intensity of the world I’d lived in as a child, but I thought the dulling of perception was an inevitable consequence of age—just as the lens of the eye is bound gradually to dim. I didn’t understand that clarity is in the mind.
I’ve since found tricks that can make the world blaze up again in about fifteen seconds, and the effects last for hours.

[…which he then goes on to tell about!]

A little later, though still on the first page, Johnstone talks about “attending” to images: “I learned to ‘hold the mind still’ like a hunter waiting in a forest” and (now on page two) “After a lot of practice at attending to the images I conjured up, I belatedly thought of attending to the reality around me. Then the deadness and greyness immediately sloughed off…”