As is said in my Let It Go post, my intention as Ben St. Clair the filmmaker is to collaborate with the SUR community on a show put out on SURstack and to leave my personal essays on Low Maintenance. But SUR gave me allowance to lead a collaboration on a show about this community in a pure form without outcome. Journey without goal. Except to raise money for their debt...
That collaboration extends to the writing of essays. So after I interviewed Frasur, a skeptic newcomer to SUR and self-identified contrarian, I was less than surprised when he blew me off when I asked him to write as essay on his experience. Thus I’ll write my thoughts on him, perhaps because I find him so compelling — perhaps doubly so because it’s obvious he doesn't like me at all.
It is very difficult to learn to love. If an object of fascination or some kind of dream or promise is presented to you, you might fall in love. But it is very hard to love if it means purely giving love without expecting anything in return. It is very difficult to do that. We usually expect a person to fulfill our desires and conform to our hero worship, and we can only fall in love if we think our expectations will be fulfilled. So in most of our love affairs, our love is conditional. It is more of a business deal than actual love….In the contemplative tradition, love and affection are free and open love, love that does not ask for anything in return. Love is a mutual dance that takes place, and even if you step on each other’s toes during the dance, it is not regarded as problematic or an insult.
— Chögyam Trungpa
SUR’s SURmon on love SURprised me when he revealed that he was once married, but because his experience of love was taking it rather than giving it, he blew it. I sensed that something in this resonated with Frasur. I know it did for me, and I suspect others in the grove at some point had felt the same.
But I feel a kinship with Frasur for our interpretation of SUR’s directive to “fill this house with your art,” which means different things for different people. But I do see a mirror in Frasur. We both come in hot, a bit gruff, wanting to separate ourselves from the pack and do it our own way. But also, we are both extremely sensitive brooders. Both wary of exploitation but wanting approval. Both craving direction but wanting to direct.
I confess I also feel sort of threatened by Frasur. Maybe because he’s more muscular, has more hair and has more beautiful eyes than me. But it’s more likely because he seems to understand the prompt for “play” better, or at least more interestingly, than I do. His version of play is to play the obstacle to play. A most ingenious paradox, more authentically playful, more story-telling than any performance of spiritual devotion to SUR.
I’ve also noticed that my partner Jess is quite taken by his compelling eyes, hair and muscles. And I think SUR is too.
This felt evident when SUR dismissed both Surcher and me when he filmed his 1-on-1 with Frasur. They sat alone up in Frasur’s sleeping loft, with a single camera on a tripod facing them. It was as if he knew that his talk with Frasur wouldn’t need to be edited down with cutaways. He knew that Frasur understood the real fake of authentic play better than anyone there. While editing this, I was floored by the conversation and I resisted cutting it down for time. I understood that Frasur and I weren’t mirrors, but rather rivers flowing in different directions. He hadn’t blown his last relationship by taking too much love. He given too much and wanted to take it back. And SUR said, “you don’t have to take it back. You can just get on with it. Let it go.”
Either way, I could not gauge Frasur’s sincerity — whether Frasur was telling the truth or acting. Whether he was criticizing SUR or respecting the illusion around him. He was doing both simultaneously.
A quantum performance.
