I had to take this out of Tweetsville because sometimes, 140 characters just aren't enough.
In a discussion about what directing is, or maybe about what a director does, or maybe all of that, I linked to this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ctaA2mERzI
When I first Stumbled Upon it, I just thought it was amazingly clever. During our discussion, the spinning water presented itself as the perfect metaphor for the collaborative process: held together by its own force.
If that's true, then I think the director is neither handler, nor glass, nor air, nor even force, but rather the simple belief that it works.
I go into a process knowing that the process will work. I don't know HOW it will work, but I know it will work. And the reason I know it will work is this: collaborative creativity isn't a manufactured process. It's just the way things are.
Same with open space: Harrison Owen didn't INVENT it. He didn't even discover it. He just observed it to be true, and pointed it out to the rest of us.
For me, directing is the same sort of thing, which is why that term feels misleading to me. If I'm in the position of doing that thing, I'm not choosing the direction in which we should go. Well, I am, but only in so much as we ALL are.
That's the brilliant thing about open space. For example, when Phelim opens space, I can look across the room and see him deep in discussion in a session, just like everyone else in the room, but he is still holding the space open for all of us simply by knowing that it works. He believes open space completely, because it is absolutely true.
Same thing with directing: if I am holding space for a creative collaborative process, I can still be engaged in it - I can be part of the water - because what I am doing to hold the space is knowing that it works.
- which isn't to say that it's an easy thing to do, necessarily. It takes work, energy, a certain kind of focus.
Although I'm not at all religious, in a way it is about being a spiritual core: I know it's true, so if someone else wavers, my knowing it to be true can re-inflate their confidence in the process.
I don't think I am the only person in the group who does this. I actually think we all do some 'directing' at some point. We empower each other. Maybe I'm just uber-confident that no matter what happens, I will always know that the process works, so if it ever comes to it, I will absolutely be the last one standing.
No, actually, I don't think I know it more powerfully than anyone else. Maybe it's just my job to have the awareness that it needs to be known.
