Just as the ferry eased out of the berth the intercom crackled with a prerecorded message that was misshapen but timely. It began this way: “This is an important safety announcement from the transit authority.” And though no one asked me to do so, I finished the announcement before the recording could, loud enough only so that the two people across from me could hear it. I leaned over and I whispered: “There isn’t any. That’s the important safety announcement. There’s no safety.”
– Stephen Jenkinson, Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble
Theatre is a safe place to do the unsafe things that need to be done. When it’s not a safe place, it’s abusive to actors and audiences alike. When its safety is used to protect cowards masquerading as heroes, it’s a boring travesty.
– John Patrick Shanley, preface to The Big Funk
At the end of my last post I said I’d write about conversations I had with some of my cohort-mates in the days after my removal, so I’ll start there.
The gist is that from those conversations, I learned that the day after he kicked me out, Daniel Shankin made a video and posted it to the cohort’s Mighty Network. I don’t know what he said exactly because I never saw it. He deleted it the next day. But one person in my cohort who did see it thought it was, and I quote, “libelous.” Here is an account from another cohort member, transcribed from a voice message they sent me.
He texted us before he posted it. Basically it was a three minute video of him explaining why Peter was asked to leave the training. And he said that – he alluded to the fact that Peter was using other substances, and that Daniel didn’t feel like that was safe for our container, and that he values the safety of our container…. What I gathered from it was that Daniel felt that Peter wasn’t safe for our container, was taking away from the safety of the container and that he was using some other substances. It was really upsetting for me to watch the video because I don’t like somebody else determining what’s safe for me, and a lot of things in this training have felt really unsafe for me…. I had a lot of issues with the video.
At least he didn’t tell everyone I was a misogynist as well.
To revisit the “other substances” issue….it is interesting that Daniel latched onto this phrase. Why so vague? Confidentiality wasn’t the issue. Daniel learned about my hapé practice the same way everyone else did: he saw me doing it all weekend. He learned that I’d smoked cannabis that Sunday morning the same way everybody else did: I talked about it in front of everyone in the integration circle. Telling everyone, in his video, that I was unsafe and using “other substances” makes it sound like he had special secret knowledge of my meth habit. Why make things more scary and defamatory with vague insinuations?
But I don’t think that was Daniel’s intent. My best guess, rather, is that he was thinking of the legal release he’d had us sign to attend the retreat, wherein it says:
I agree to adhere to the guidelines for safety as provided by Tam Integration at all times during the Retreat, including but not limited to my agreement not to use substances which are not prescribed to me
and disclosed to Tam Integration at the Retreat, and I agree not to bring any illicit substances to the Retreat.
Ah well. I guess you got me, officer.
As I was gathering my thoughts for this post yesterday I noticed that I’m losing steam. I mentioned this to my wife this morning and she said that was probably a good thing, that writing about this has done its job, releasing the energy of this – and here I’m quoting at least one other member of the cohort – “shit show.”
It turns out that, at least for now, I don’t want to write weekly stoic meditations on safety; unintentional harm; group trauma dynamics; capitalism and psychedelics; and whatever else went wrong here. In the last post I said that the mushrooms told me that Daniel’s program sucks, but I don’t necessarily believe that. I learned a lot, and I made at least one dear, dear friend – who, by the way, sat with me back in June for a 6g (gifted to me at the retreat! illicitly! shhhhh!) penis envy journey that was very very very beautiful. It’s not the best $9,000 I’ve ever spent, but it’s far from the worst. Life is mysterious, and we’re not in control.
By far the best money I ever spent on myself was the roughly $15k I spent on my PSIP work, and I’m so grateful that I got into the Somatic Experiencing training on my way toward becoming a PSIP therapist. The best all this somatic and spiritual work can do is deliver us into the now, free and ready to participate in creation, maybe like we were as children, before we were wounded, abandoned, shamed and gaslit. And that’s where it feels like I am. Here. Now. Excited to participate in making this show a little less shitty, if I can manage it.
That said, this was really resonating with me last week, and since my last post with the image from Stand By Me got more reads on Substack than any other post – maybe because of the image? – allow me to contradict myself with more Bukowski.
So I hope the next post will be my last. I’ll write about our back and forth with Daniel’s lawyer, Allison Hoots, as my attorney (wife) and I attempted to mercilessly extort poor Daniel Shankin out of his hard-earned shekels.
See you then.