There are so, so many things today. So many. Lots of things that made me laugh out loud, none of which I can remember. I must start carrying one of the abundance of tiny notebooks I own, and remedy that.
Oh yes... the jostling ladies. Rows of them, me included. Lots of feet and towels and bums. Lots of wet hair and conversation. More laughing. Female ease. Jean, I miss you. You'd have found something wicked to say. I hope you're at Ruth's art exhibition on Tuesday. I'm looking forward to that anyway, and a dose of Jean would ice an already tasty cake. Ruth has the capacity to paint in lots of different styles, with an honesty and openness I'm not sure she sees. I love her work and I'm proud of her, yes, for the art she produces, and also simply for doing it.
Another meeting with Rob at lunchtime made me really know what flow is. It's like a light switch for thoughts and ideas, and... I've been thinking about this... I have no fear of getting it wrong. Maybe that's part of it the beauty of it. Not that I think I won't get it wrong - I always manage to talk crap in one way or another - but in the idea-having game that Rob and I seem to be playing, there are, for me at least, no negative consequences for ridiculous ideas.
Even a 'no' isn't a negative consequence (the idea about 5 heads, each on its own stick, was genuinely ridiculous, but I entertained it long enough for another one to come). A big fat no to something like that is a gift, but it's a no to using that idea for that purpose, not to having had it or even to having said it.
I'm sure I've read about this. What on earth, I think to myself, did I ever do to get to deserve to experience it in such a fulfilling and exciting way? There is no time to do all the ideas we are having, and they're not all for our projects. Some of them are for individual projects, or things other people might be doing.
So, I'm grateful for a creative collaborator who gives me permission to fuck up regally as part of the process, and for the energy he brings to it. I've been trying so hard for so very long to have that feeling, and it's not yet there in everything I do, but genuinely accepting failure as part of the process and enjoying it - that feeling is getting bigger and more powerful.
Today, we saw that Cellblock, our 26-hour show, got a mention in The Guardian, as part of The Nursery Festival, in an article about marathon performances. Of course, that doesn't make it 'mean' more, but it is somehow deeply pleasing. And that, as Rob pointed out, came from one of those cafe lunches.
Cellblock was a fantastic experience for me - it was so far beyond what we did on the organisation front - it took off and flew. It was made of all the people involved in every way, and of the support and shaping of Charlotte Gittins, a truly gifted director and improviser. But that's what made it so special - it was its own creature.
I am in no position to judge the empirical 'quality' of the show, if there can be such a thing in art/performance, but as far as our aims go (and oh yes, we did set some) that's exactly what we wanted. We wanted it to be something we couldn't control, and it exceeded everything we could have hoped for. For that, and to everyone involved, I am hugely grateful, and I feel lucky, happy and blessed.
Back to the here and now. This evening's workshop was, and will be, life-changing, in such a gentle way. I'll be more specific another day, in a few weeks' time, maybe. A lifetime of thinking about something one way, and I feel very strongly that this is the point I will look back on in the future and say 'that's when it changed'.
There are already a whole string of events that have led to this - I can see many of them - and I'm sure there are many more I'm not aware of. A few months ago, maybe even less, I felt that I was in the lull before a major shift - on the edge of a precipice, about to leap off. My favourite way of thinking about it is like a jug that's slowly filling with water. It fills, it fills, steadily, steadily, and at the lip of the jug, all is quiet. If you're judging by how much water is flowing over the edge, nothing's happening, and yet it's there, building, building.
When it gets almost to the top, where the water get's fat and round and the meniscus tries to keep it back and stop it from bursting - that's where I was, just about to go. And then, when it's time, that one quarter drop of water takes it over the edge and it bursts... and the energy in it is huge; powerful.
That's where I feel like I've been for the past few weeks, on and off. In that flow. In the middle of that shift. I had a huge shift when I stopped drinking alcohol. Massive. That's one way of living I just couldn't imagine until it happened. This is another. I'm very excited. And very humbled. And I have no idea what life will be like after it, but I'm looking forward to finding out. Thank you Sarah Dawrant, of Forward Bound. Your coaching rocks.
On the way home from the workshop, I was beaming. Glowing. The full moon smiled down on me, glowing too. Everything is in flow, and I get to be swept along in all of that, shining like that was my job.
Thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment