Near the end of his life, Grotowski seemed to place a peculiar importance on not being divided, not having incompatible things and contradictions within himself. We might very well contain multitudes, but it would be best, if the multitude had, as in Aristotle's metaphor of thought, changed from being a fleeing army, first by one person, and then more and more, stopping their flight and turning to look at something.
The basis of everything was the conservatory training, and whether it was the right part of the country or type of program for me isn't really a question worth asking. Once you set off down that road, it is yours for good or for ill. Then the decade or so trying to get a foothold in a very commercialized and compromising industry while keeping my hands clean. Not in a moralistic sense, just knowing that I might need my hands to defend myself one of these days. Heading off to law school wasn't a reversal, there was no farewell to the muse, which perhaps explains why I was once again the odd man out in the Midwest as a NYC method actor. It served me well in the studies, unrelenting focus, memorization, etc. But it seemed that while I was looking for the marrow of things, the others were eyeing the dessert cart. Then, after several years of rather dramatic struggle, a sort of last redoubt in the academy, and another misfortune in the Midwest, as it proved to be a very corrupt and craven faculty, so I just set myself up in the library for four years, read, wrote, and took philosophy, history and literature classes in other departments. After my first philosophy coursework there, the professor took me aside and asked if I wanted to do some independent directed study in the following semester -- but even though the corrupt faculty and mediocre program in my own area was interposed between myself and the art, my stand there was firmly set in the theatre, which was my basis for being. In the years since, I've read far more philosophy than the PhD candidates at even the most rigorous programs (there once was an Oxon. prof who greeted incoming students with the suggestion that they just spend the first year reading novels, and presumably observing their response), so I have a good grounding in that field. But perhaps its right that after trying these three paths in the culture, the consolations of philosophy are apparent to me in another context.