Breathing Underwater

What do Kate McKinnon, mermaids, and young children have in common? They can all breathe underwater, in a sense.

Recently, I've grown more and more addicted to Saturday Night Live, anticipating my next hit of "Live from New YoRK IT'S SATURDAY NIIIIGHT!!!" all week. I could dedicate a whole blog on the many ways Saturday Night Live is the marvelous and outstanding program it is, but one characteristic about the show that keeps me coming back is it's tremendous generosity. SNL gives, and gives, and gives.

When they say that opening phrase, they're not performing at all, their eyes are wide and sparkling, you can feel that lump of un-distilled passion swelling in their stomachs, they're gifting us a peek of their child-like obsession with what they do. They're handing it over to the audience, inviting us to be a part of their game, inviting us to go underwater with them for an hour and a half.

My high school acting teacher talked about what is likely the primary goal of a performer: to re-learn the ability to play like a child. I'd never considered the idea before, but I was, and am, hit with how perfectly true it is to everything I now feel about performing. My teacher described that as kids grow older, they need to "come up for air" more and more often, finding it harder and harder to stay "underwater" in their pretend worlds. Whether dolls and figurines are the vessels, or the children themselves, the once elaborate worlds of "make-believe" become spotty, then start to fade. Eventually, like Adam and Eve's sudden awareness of their naked state, it all seems too ridiculous, the worlds fade into extinction and the games stop. At a certain age a child may pick up a foam sword and a stick-on eyepatch only to find she can't get underwater at all, try and try as she might, like there's a floatation device she can't remove. The tricky thing is that holding your breath doesn't count. When we're growing older and watching our worlds fade and running out of air, we try holding our breath, only to discover it doesn't work like that. The worlds have to give us air, have to be self-sustaining.

A few days ago a friend of mine turned to me and said "you know something I think makes us compatible? We bs things a little longer than is normal. We'll keep up a stupid conversation a little longer than we should, a few steps beyond the acceptable stopping place". "Immature" and invested, like children.

Each SNL cast member has an unbelievable ability to breathe underwater. Through years and years of work and study, they've regained an impressive chunk of that elusive skill. They're aware they're performing, they're aware the sets aren't real places, their hair just wigs, their characters only impressions, but it doesn't matter at all because they can breathe underwater. They acknowledge it's a game because they don't need to pretend it's real, just like children. They take their time and play and swim around and when they look at the camera and cry out that opener, they're saying "come on in, the water's great!"

This phenomenon could explain the awkwardness present after someone says they're "just being silly", it seems they're really saying  "I'm only pretending to swim, imitating the actions of the game, but not really playing". It implies there's a separation between this sense of play and "real-life", when there's not.

When we're little, we wish the fancy-vent cover really was the entrance to Narnia and fantasize about finally receiving our Hogwarts acceptance notice, but the magic was in knowing they weren't real, and still being able to accept them. Now, when I'm babysitting, watching children play but only able to see their worlds in two-dimensions, I know what Sebastian really meant when he begged a young but aging Ariel to stay "under the sea".