The mind branches...

Jean was talking about Icelandic dialect, and I can't remember what got her on that topic, I think perhaps I was jabbering on in some lame accent in an attempt to talk about something.... no wait.... it was definitely something I was saying about Iceland, and dammit if I cannot remember what my point was...

While she was describing the dialect to me I asked her about her schooling. She attended CalArts at some point, and I was curious about her studies, and how she came to know certain people and what events brought her to that point in her life, at which point ---

I realized that in mid description of both Icelandic dialects and CalArts schooling experience, that I had interrupted her twice, and was doing so now, a third time, realizing my own train of thought that was following some strange branching path, that, as she said something, it triggered an association in my mind, which, I think, is normal for most people, although, I seem to have a need to follow that branch immediately, letting go of the current topic before the new one slips away. So without hearing her out to finish her talk, I stop her and immediately impose my new thoughts on the discussion, which made her think of ---

Smoking forest rangers. Her and I were in a fantastic scene in improv where we played a couple of foresters who smoked. by smoking, I mean we started forest fires. We were quite the grizzly pair, and many times throughout the scene we were confronted by minions of the law and our situation was precarious, yet we also, with nonchalance, skirted any ill fate from our subversive actions against the land with which we were trusted to protect. A sad and yet funny situation. So much like real life I think, which made me think of ---

The walking around exercise we practiced in improv, where we, as players would simply walk around and carry on conversations about real things in our lives we had experienced, was not a scene, but a real story from our real lives, and at some point, Peter had all the other players step off the stage and Jean and I had continued our real conversation, and at this point we began an improvised scene. We continued, in an honest manner discussing these things in our lives, which I can only remember included something about band in high school and people who played horns, and at the same time, improvised some sort of scene where we were a couple in a grocery store. It was very real and believable, with many layers, complex characters, much like real life. It was a fantastic and deft way to expose us, as improvisers and students, to the higher complexities of character and scene creation.

At this point we realized how far off I had branched from the original topic, without ever resolving the topic(s) we started with, and we began to hunt backward to the start.

I don't know that Jean ever got to make the point she had about Icelandic dialects, and writing this now, I can't even remember what I was doing that made her bring it up in the first place.

So I guess all I've discovered here is my memory isn't as sharp as I'd thought and I interrupt people while they're talking. God, I'm a jackass.