During my trip to Toronto for the Voice Intensive, I will never forget a very curious person I met outside during a lunch break.

Spending all day rolling around on your back, dancing like you’ve never heard music before in your life, and making sounds that (we’re told) originate from our pelvis can have a certain effect on a person. For me, it made me feel high. Most days I felt like I was either swimming up current (breakdown) or down current (breakthrough), but either way I was on a ride that I could neither explain nor exit. I just let it carry me, and on this particular day that ride brought me to a bench. A bench that I decided to sit in front of – as opposed to on –  while I ate my lunch.

I had my journal out. I was writing. I was thinking about things. And then… a guy came over. He sat on the opposite bench, and ate his own lunch. Stealing glances at me between bites. Do I have you riveted?

“Why aren’t you sitting on the bench?” he asked me.

“Because it’s more comfortable on the ground,” I told him.

He seemed to accept this answer, and then sat on the ground too.

He told me he didn’t read. I asked him why? He told me that he didn’t want other people’s thoughts infiltrating his own. He was on high alert. He had his ideas and he was sticking to them. He had his beliefs and he challenged me to alter them.

I was in an opposite place. I was feeling a little bit like water.

I told him that I thought of the authors I read as my teachers, and that as humans we’re naturally collaborative. We all borrow ideas, and then shine them through our own unique lens. And that’s awesome!! There’s nothing manipulative about reading. It’s simply a sharing of information.

We went on to talk about acting and about art. He didn’t understand the point. I told him that movies make you feel good. There doesn’t have to be this over-reaching ‘point.’ We tell stories because it’s fun; because we can learn something from each other. I act and engage with others creatively because of that prickling that happens on the skin when I experience (to steal the words of Sylvia Plath) a sudden flash of joy that comes when I “commune deeply with another person.”

I told him I was an actor. He asked me to act something.

He asked me to act as though I had spent my entire life believing trees were green, and had just now discovered they were actually purple.

“Okay,” I said. I did it. He gave me a 7/10 for believability. Then it was his turn. I gave him an 8/10. He smiled big, and then switched my score to an 8 as well.

The joy that comes when we commune deeply with another person said Sylvia Plath. I guess we were doing that in a way. What does she mean by “deep?” I think she just means engaged; listening; sharing your life… if only for a brief moment.

At the end of the conversation, he said “I don’t want to know your name… I want to give you a nickname.” He thought long and hard about it a for a few seconds before saying “Bench Rejector.” And then he asked me to give him one. I threw my head back too and waited for a spark of inspiration before saying “rain man.” He liked it.

“How will I remember you?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I answered.