This is meant to be a 1 hour event. I ran this at a four day festival, around the 60% mark of (conscious/awake) time.
Wail and Gnash
[5m of mingling / trickling in – make it clear that the circle will start at X:05]
[Get everyone in a circle]
You probably have some sort of mental sensation or physical sensation that is different when you say something that’s very true, as opposed to not quite right or outright false. I am going to say about thirty sentences out loud. I ask you all to repeat each one after me, while paying attention to the mental or physical sensations of saying it.
[Give it 3 seconds after every audience repetition to say the next point]
- Everyone here is boring
- I am boring and I hate it
- I wasted money and I feel bad about it
- I would have fun if I had drugs
- I’m not cool enough to know how to get drugs
- I would have fun if I got enough sleep
- I would have fun if I got enough food
- I’m not taking care of myself and I’m ashamed of it
- I don’t know how to talk to people
- All the fun is happening in some other room I don’t know about
- Maybe I’m not having fun because I’m ugly
- I lost my chance to learn how to exist at a party when I was a teen
- If I like someone too much this automatically makes me annoying to them
- I’m old and tired. I’m just a bag of bones.
- I just need something to fucking happen
- I’m not getting laid
- I don’t have enough to offer
- I’m too in my own head to be interesting
- I don’t know how to dance
- I said something stupid to that guy
- I don’t have enough twitter followers
- I would have fun if I were smarter
- I would have fun if I were funnier
- I’m not supposed to be at a party, I’m supposed to be tweeting
- I’m better than everyone else here
- I’m worse than everyone else here
- This isn’t my crowd
- I hate it when boring people join conversations and ruin the vibe
- I’m scared to join conversations in case I’m boring and ruin the vibe
- I don’t know what I want and its driving me nuts
- Someone made me feel bad and I don’t know how I feel about it
- Someone made me feel bad and there’s nothing I can do about it
That was my final prompt. I now invite you to volunteer yours. As before, the circle will repeat what you said back to you.
[Let people go until the energy has petered out – there are long pauses between contributions – or you have 20m left, whatever is sooner]
We are about to move on to reframes and meaningmaking. Now the format is that you volunteer with an unhappy sentence, the circle says WHICH MEANS, and you say a second sentence that is a reframe. I am going to give four examples. Please say WHICH MEANS instead of repeating my words back to me.
- I don’t know how to talk to people, WHICH MEANS I am in a growth environment
- I’m not getting laid WHICH MEANS nothing. My suffering has no purpose and upside and that’s okay.
- I don’t really want to talk to anyone WHICH MEANS I’m just here to take a nice eight hour walk through the nice venue for the rest of today
- This isn’t my crowd, WHICH MEANS I can observe people who are different from me
I now invite you to volunteer your reframes.
[Let people go until energy has petered out, or you have 10m left, whichever is sooner]
We have ten minutes left here for freeform socialization. I invite you to amble around and talk to each other.