Week 22's Thing: Letting things happen
22 Weeks Of No TV
Week 22's thing was a very momentous thing. I showed the very first inkling of my one-woman show Plasticland: A Better Place. (As an update, I am taking part in the FAR space residency with The Field. It ends in a 13-minute presentation at Dixon Place.)
The best parts of this opportunity are the chances to present what I am working on at Fieldwork PLUS meetings. At these meetings, my fellow residents and I show each other what we've been working on along the way. The very first one was couched in week 22 of No TV. Suffice it to say, I spent most of the week immersed in what I would show at that meeting. What can I say, I love a deadline. And I love a clear goal. That's the best way for me to get anything done. The showing went well. I got plenty of feedback, which means I have plenty to work on for the next showing. (In the middle of week 24)
Week 22 also brought an epiphany. I didn't know it was an epiphany at the time. It was so subtle but it gave me a breath of confidence mixed with newfound ease.
When I think of creating things, I think about the momentum it takes to get them going. I analyze the difficulties of starting from a still position. Physics tells us that bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. I thought about creating things as if I was pushing giant snowballs up hills or building huge domino chains. The snowball requires huge effort to push up the hill. As I get it up the hill, I heave with all of my might... And heave. And heave. And then I get it to slowly roll downhill - hopefully it rolls of it's own accord, picking up greater speed and more snow. Or I imagine setting up domino after domino to form huge chains. I knock the domino chain down and sometimes the domino falls lamely against obstacles in the way. I have to find my way around these obstacles and keep the dominoes falling forward.
Frankly, these images don't work for me anymore. The Greek God Sisyphus was doomed to push boulders up hills only to see it go down hill for all eternity. I'm not doomed. And I'm not entirely sure that I want my thing to roll out-of-control downhill and land in a great big entropic calamity. And I'm tired of fruitlessly building domino chains. The perfect chain will never exist and I will be (once again) PUSHING obstacles out of the way.
Why does it always have to be a fight?
Let's move away from the splat and think about creating in a new way - maybe something with less terrestrial flailing and clumsiness. Let's explore something with a little more grace.
A wave in the ocean has a pattern I can dig. As it comes to the shore, it crests and breaks on the sand. It retreats back into the sea and then the energy is reclaimed by the ocean to make more waves. There is no point of stillness and that energy is always contained within the ocean - even if it looks completely flat, it still has that potential wave contained in it.
This new image is far less violent. It doesn't require starting from zero over and over again. All the energy is there, even when you don't feel it. This feels like it requires more subtlety to calibrate; I use minor changes to my advantage. Brute force never asked me to stand still. I can trust that there will always be another wave coming. I can depend on this when I feel empty. The wave is coming. Not to mention, the ocean's celestial partnerships. Now, we're riding the universe, baby. We can leave that snowball alone. There will always be the next wave.