I can’t do this on my own

Having met this new brain squirrel on my own, it was a different experience. The same sense of emotional impact was there but without the instant emotional release.

I found it whilst I was practising questioning my thoughts and it turns out that I had to question the truth of what this brain squirrel was saying to me in order to find the release.

After the release

I’m noticing that once the release happens, the brain squirrel becomes a reminder, rather than a taunt. For example, when I notice the desire to run to someone else to tell me what to do, the situation may remind me of my brain squirrel “I cannot do this on my own” and this in turn helps me to release the anxiety.

Beforehand, this phrase would have just brought a sense of complete belief and thus despair at the ‘truth’ of the situation.

My newest reminder

So now I have a new phrase to trigger my thought patterns, but hopefully this brain squirrel is also now working for me. I would like you to meet him; he is called:

If people see me they will attack me.

This is a bit of a temporary name for him, because the semantics aren’t entirely clear, but for the moment you may think of him in the context of Avatar, where seeing someone doesn’t mean just having them in view but rather seeing a glimpse of who they really are.

His personal ad

This particular brain squirrel, having been questioned and now under new management, has written a Very Personal Ad:

I want to train so as to better show the real me, my heart & soul. I want to be a better dancer so that I can let more people see more of the real me, so that I can feel love.

This final gift from my brain squirrel is why this post is listed under Dancing, and not Personal mumblings. This is no mumble, and the clear intention that I have here is strong and all about dance.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Following a thread as far as I can
• Where I release my agoraphobia of the mind
• A pile of yuck I’ve been ignoring

So this is an attempt to create a safe little blog post for some of this stuff to come out and be.

One year anniversary

One thing that I have not talked about very much in public happened a year and a day ago. I’m not surprised that it’s taken me so long to be able to write about it, but I am now in the odd position of having lost track of who I have and haven’t told and blind-siding people with the news. Yesterday was the one year anniversary of my Mum’s death.

It’s taken a long time for it to filter through, a lifetime’s practice of repression and denial doesn’t drop away overnight, but it is coming through and sometimes I’m able to see the positive in that, the space for healing. The rest of the time I try to hold myself somewhere between pushing everything into the cellar at the back of my mind, and being completely overwhelmed.

My blog

I’ve missed writing here. Part of the reason I stopped was a fear of showing too much to potential employers or colleagues. Given that I want to work in dance, and in particular with people who use dance to explore emotion and humanity, I’m starting to feel that may have been an unnecessary fear. My sudden desire to be taken seriously, to try and become a dancer, rather than accept that I already am one, getting in the way of me actually exploring.

There’s a thought, a belief, or several hanging around behind this, something like “professional people are stoic” and “showing weakness makes you less employable”. I’m not really feeling strong enough to poke around there too much, I seem to be so tired when I’m not dancing (and when I am there’s energy coming from a seemingly boundless source).

Meeting new mind squirrels

When someone is able to point to your mind squirrels and name them, it is both relieving and terrible. The sense of emotional release is potentially addictive, and the pain is therefore bitter-sweet. The combination of surprise, delight and agony often causes me to laugh at how my own mind is constructed – the ridiculous nature of my habits, thoughts, feelings & behaviours.

It is easy to recognise when a mind squirrel has been caught in the headlights. My brain goes quiet, all I can say is either “Yes” or “Ow”, and it feels like I’ve been skewered through the chest. It is not an understanding. It is not the addition of a new node of information to the multi-faceted construction of my mental model, indeed it can take a while for my mind to catch up and put the understanding into a context it can accept. It goes straight to the heart of me, and is thus a raw & powerful moment. It is to feel heard, understood, acknowledged.

I may not have what I truly want

Meet my most recently discovered squirrel. He is an old squirrel I feel. He does not talk to me directly but I can see his hairs left on so many things I’ve felt. He will not be released just by knowing he is there; he has minions who may carry on working, even in his absence. No, this squirrel is a network of squirrels, and he may not even be the leader, but he is most certainly a General.

Oddly enough, despite the military metaphor, I do not feel in battle with my squirrels. Rather they are like busy little workers, given a task so long ago, creating new squirrels as they see the need, and only without proper management and guidance have they wreaked the havoc that is now happening in my mind (and most everyone else’s too).

My job therefore is to learn to manage my squirrels properly. To see their skills & talents and put them to good uses rather than unhelpful ones. To tell them off for all their hard work will not win them over, rather I must try and remember to be grateful for all their efforts, to remember the good they have done for me and not just focus on the negative. I will become a Master Squirrel Herder, and eventually they will need only minimal attention day-to-day. For the moment however, having found my squirrels in panic and disarray they need constant love and attention, and I am so very tired.

I’m not alone; I’m receiving support from a Master Squirrel Herder, have company in fellow Squirrel Herding Apprentices, and sometimes have the patience and understanding that it is acceptable for my squirrels to be in disarray right now and to give myself a break. Indeed, learning how to maintain momentum and motivation without beating on myself is another new skill to start to practise. (Skills and skills about skills. It’s no surprise I’m tired.) Not being alone doesn’t stop it sucking though.

(Thanks to Joely for the Mind Squirrel analogy, it’s serving me well.)

And breathe…

I can see bits and bobs I could write more about. I don’t know if I will or not. But for now fatigue is taking over and I would rather avoid this turning into bumbling emotional rambling. More than it already is at least. So I’m going to see if I can manage some more knitting or if I need to just sit and stare at the rain a while.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• A brain squirrel with a personal ad

Whilst I can see parallels that agree in my life, there have been times when I’ve wanted someone else to provide just the right dance class, just the Arabic language class, enough challenge to keep me interested but not too much that I have to work too hard! Yet for some things I find myself unable to manage both the level of challenge and dealing with the challenge itself at the same time. In these areas I would seem to be stuck in the middle ground, reliant on others to manage the challenge.

When stretching, I get a dramatically more satisfactory result if I have a partner who is applying the force of the stretch and I can focus on breathing through and relaxing into the stretch. When dealing with emotional & psychological upset I get a much better result if I have someone else guiding me towards the truth of the situation whilst I focus on being honest with myself and staying open and vulnerable. In both these situations, the amount of challenge needed to obtain the benefit is prohibitive to me both working through that challenge and managing the challenge, i.e. making sure I stay safe.

One of my stories is that I should be able to handle personal challenges like this on my own, that it is unacceptable behaviour to ask for help. It’s taken a long while for me to see that I really needed someone else’s support with my mental health, and I know that I’m not the only one with this story.

This doesn’t contradict Havi’s post, but rather add to it. Whilst someone may be giving away their power & sovereignty to avoid taking responsibility for their own progress, there is another situation where a person is neither beginner nor expert and genuinely needs help to progress.

Beginners need direction, advice on where to start, but can then get on with trying things out by themselves. Which textbook is good for beginners? What exercises are best for those new to pilates/yoga/ballet? How far should I go on my first run? What should I write about on twitter?

Experts can navigate themselves and stretch themselves according to their own goals. I can study proper use of the subjunctive in French grammar, practice correctly engaging my core in downward dog, adjust my movement to take pressure off a sore knee, and decide to reveal more or less about a particular aspect in my writing online.

It is the addition of this element of navigation that I think is key to what I’m feeling here. A good partner will take instruction from me, it is still my choice where I go, but they navigate while I drive. They can even help me keep taking personal responsibility for my own choices through gentle reminder and feedback.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Going where I know…
• How can I allow & do at the same time?
• Blogging as a beginner

Ribbed Beanie for any size head

I’ve been knitting a lot recently, and I’ve even gone and designed my own hat as a present for a friend. I wrote up the pattern to share online and so here is my Ribbed Beanie for any size head.

Simples.

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• Identification, Self expression, Conformity and a rant
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• Turning a lifelong fear into strength

The fact that spending a week crashing with a student friend of a friend that I met once, and her friends, in Brighton and then spending all day out on the streets trying to squash, jam, bend, balance, run and carry a group of 21 people into unusual places was so damn easy to do is a lesson in itself.  This burbling ramble back into blogging however, is about something different.

What this post is actually about

I’ve spent the last 18 months trying to work out what I want to do.  Trying to follow the advice of ‘Follow you heart’ and ‘Do what you love’. Such aphorisms will never tell the whole story (another favourite of mine is ‘Let go’, because tritely spouting metaphor without any explanation is always helpful).  Still, the idea of tuning into what you want, and then doing it sounds quite simple.

Ok, it is simple. What it isn’t, is easy.

Semantics ahoy!

I’ve always been a bit pedantic about the definitions of words – I had an hour long argument with a friend in sixth form once (schooling at age 16-18, if you don’t know what 6th form is) all about whether or not the Universe contained Heaven (the fact I’m an atheist and don’t believe in Heaven was irrelevant, I can be pedantic and hypothetical all at once). He said no, I said yes. We argued and argued and argued and then suddenly, click. Basically, our answers were entirely dependent on our definitions of the word Universe. Mine was ‘anything and everything’, his was the subtly different ‘anything and everything physical’. At that point the whole argument became moot and we just agreed that we had different definitions of the word.  So yeah, I’m pedantic about saying what you mean and meaning what you say – and yes this is going to come together into some kind of point but I’ve no time to plan and edit because I might not feel like writing after dinner and I’ve been given my 5 minute warning before I have to go be sociable.

The semantics of ‘Follow your heart’

The general gist of these aphorisms is to know what you want to do, and to go and do them.  The semantics comes in on such innocent looking words as ‘know’, ‘want’, & ‘do’.

Knowing

To know something can mean several things, it can mean to decide or agree or understand, but note how these are all words to do with the brain, and thinking.  And the whole point here is to be in touch with your heart and feelings.  Better not-so-much-synonyms-as-just-other-words-to-help-explain-it-better might be recognise, notice, accept.

Wanting

As for wanting something – this is where the majority of nay-sayers jump on board with their own personal definitions of the word and scream all over anything you’re trying to communicate because you may have just pushed a hot button of theirs, oh deary me, do you think, no surely not.  Again, it’s a lot to do with understanding the words as being about the heart and not the head.  The head tells you what it thinks you should want, or ought to want, to keep you safe, part of the group, and anything else you might worry about.  The head tells you to want status, power and cash.  The heart wants joy, meaning, love, peace, contentment, exploration, adventure, and all those lovely things.

There’s another thing about ‘want’ however. The Moaners can be quick to argue about wanting things that are impossible (such as to grow wings and fly like in dreams) or restricted (like being a pilot when you have to wear glasses). Again, it can be seen as head vs heart.  Often the head has decided exactly how something has to happen for it to be correct.  The heart however is interested less in having wings or a job as a Navy pilot and more things like experiencing flight, heights, the wind rushing past you, freedom to manoeuvre in the air.  Once you can identify what it is about the experience that you want, you can find other equally good ways of fulfilling your heart’s desire even if your head is arguing the whole time that you’re not doing it the right way!

Doing

Then there’s ‘do’. And this one is the one that I have finally realised (like just today, just before I figured I would write about it here, this is fresh off the press, hot news kiddos).  To do something does not necessarily mean to do something constructive.  Shocker, I know. I’ve just totally changed your whole world view haven’t I? You’re reassessing everything after that paradigm shifting beauty.

Thus my tricky little title is lying (the old bait and switch).  It’s not Doing what I want vs Being miserable, but doing what I want means being miserable (sometimes).  Yup, the moping, lying about everywhere, not bothering to leave the house, sulking, being maudlin, avoiding the world, and all that stuff is exactly what I needed to do.

Now don’t get me wrong. It’s depression, it’s a medical condition, and I’m seeking treatment. It’s not happy, I don’t want it to continue, and my head sure as hell doesn’t want anything to do with it thank you very much (it’s sucking my status, power and cash right down the drain). But my heart is pretty damn clear that right now it needs a huge great big dolloping dose of feeling crappy and sulky and miserable and whiney and petulant.

Sure, I could help myself feel better (superficially) by doing exercise, going out, still taking care of myself.  Sure, I could be applying for easy work, running my own projects & looking for more projects to join, and even making more of an effort to stay in touch with friends and family. And yes, I’ve been told to do all these things.  And sorry, but no.  Because this is what I need. I need to feel shitty, I need to feel morose, I need to be depressed, and I need to learn from it all.

Some kind of ending type thing

One gentle reminder – this is just me and where I am now. I may change (correction, I will change) and it may bear no relevance or resemblance to anyone else’s experiences of depression or similar situations.  And that’s ok.

The point that I’m slowly allowing to eek out of my brain with all this is: I’ve been ‘Doing what I love’ all this time.  No the aphorism doesn’t fit the reality, but then they very rarely do (heck, aphorisms all seem to come in opposing pairs anyway: one man’s meat is sauce for the gander and all that malarkey).  Rather, I’ve been allowing my heart to direct my actions, and my mind has been serving my heart rather than the other way around.  Maybe my mind could do with learning better ways to express pain, sorrow & anger (and that’s all part of my current plan) than depression, withdrawal & boredom, but at least my heart is leading the way for once.

So yeah, I’m going to feel shitty for a while yet (and frustrated at how slow these processes are), but I will hopefully remember from time to time that all this is a step forward, movement in the direction that I want to be going, and though it hurts like hell at times, and leaves me numb, deflated and wrung out at others, it’s my choice, I choose it, I want it, and I’m ok.

Sidenote

I hate the misuse of aphorisms. They’re basically only useful as reminders for things you already understand, but they’re bandied about as learning aids (particularly in places like twitter and religion).  Doing what you love doesn’t mean always loving what you’re doing. Following your heart doesn’t always mean being blindly led by your emotions. And aphorisms are useful as simplistic reminders, but never tell the whole story and can lead you into a false sense of certainty.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Living in the past
• The journey to nowhere
• Meditation on time

Suffice to say it was brilliant fun and I got to meet 20+ new and awesome people.

There are some photos on the Telegraph website and more on Facebook, if you have me on there.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• A brain squirrel with a personal ad
• The P-word
• Going where I know…

Yes, the P-word has a lot of emotion attached to it.

The P-word is <shudder> ‘Professional’.

Well, I figured that one reasonable marker was that once I’d been paid to work in dance then I could use it.  Except I’ve been paid to teach a number of times before now and I still didn’t feel I could use it.

I got as far as semi-professional, or even part-time-professional (I know, I’m totally making these up – that’s what crazy does to you), but mostly not out loud to other people, just as a label for myself in my head.

Note to self: labels are not that useful unless being used to provide simplified ways for people to understand something quickly.  In your head they just mess you up!

The good news

Cause I like to try and end my posts on an uplifting note, if only for my own sanity.

I recently had the privilege to work with a group of students of varied ages and dance experience.  For two sessions of 3 hours.  I don’t remember being happier, and there was a big part of the final ‘click’ that started to break open the mess around the P-word.  Note I said “started”, I’m still calling the P-word after all.

At the end of the first session I realised I had hit what I termed the ‘holy triumvirate’ of career path hunting:

• I liked it
• I was good at it
• Someone was willing to pay me to do it

The first one was easy to spot – I was bouncing around the place, chattering my head off or simply dancing around in the space enjoying moving.

The second one came later when I realised that I had real ideas and experiences to share when asked questions or facing problems.  I’m rarely lost for something to say, but to actually feel I had something meaningful and valuable to offer – now that felt good!

The final one was the simplest one.  I was there as an invited guest artist, they were offering me money to be there.  I’d have totally done it for free too, but I ended up walking away with a cheque in my hand and big ass grin on my face.

Frankly, when I had this realisation (right about the time I read this awesome Ittybiz post) I was actually a little disappointed not to hear angels singing and blinding lights – but that’s what a childhood spent in places like Sunday school will do to your expectations.

And next?

Ah yes, my brain’s immediate and wholly annoying questioning of where this is going to lead.

Well, I don’t know.  That’s been one of my big lessons this year.  And I’m still working on being ok with that.  In the meantime, I try and taper the heart-exploding panic of not having my life mapped out for the next 20 years with the reminder that 1) having it mapped out would cause me to die of boredom, and 2) I’m actually making progress here.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Having a good time
• A brain squirrel with a personal ad
• Bodies in Urban Spaces – Brighton Festival

The piece consists of four male dancers and a double bass player.  Whilst the guys are doing their thing on stage, the musician is playing, recording and mixing loops of his music, percussion and other clever tricks real time – an absolute treat for the audience (and probably the dancers too).

The dancing itself was mostly gorgeous to watch, and pretty full on for the whole hour.  Cue sweat patterns – all part of being a male dancer though, at least we don’t have to pretend that we don’t sweat.  There were the odd times when the unison wasn’t together, I caught a couple of moments where someone stopped to wait for the others to catch up and so on, but my Dad never saw any of that so maybe I’m being too picky.

The lifts were great fun, and even managed to perplex me as to how it was done on a couple – wonderful and frustrating at the same time.  The duets in general were excellent fun to watch and you could see the smiles on the dancers’ faces.  They even admitted afterwards that part of that was having to egg each other to keep going as energy levels started to flag.

Having 4 guys dance together was brilliant for me, as I got to see the differences between them and how, whilst I might not have the facility of one or the strength of another, they each had different limitations and natural abilities that made them unique and I’m no different.  I will admit to being horribly jealous at times, they’re all a few years younger than me, thus managing to make me feel old at 28, but mostly I was inspired and determined to find/create more opportunities to dance.

There’s only a couple of more dates down South to catch this, but it’s worth it – and if you don’t manage to see this one then check out Retina anyway.  They’ve been producing consistently great quality dance for a while now, and being based in the East Midlands it’s a real treat for us to have this based in our region, rather than down in London.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Sense of Self
• nottdance09 (15-25 October 2009)
• Music & Art Festival

Purposefully obscure, from technical jargon to non-linear plot, it’s a feeding ground for geeks and nerds to compete over who has mastered full understanding of the film.  But don’t worry, if you’re just interested in good film then still check it out, you don’t need to understand all the details to get the drama, and indeed the vague feeling of WTF? the film creates is part of the intention of the director/writer/actor/composer/pretty much everything else guy, Shane Carruth.

Of course, if you do decide you want to pick it apart, there’s plenty of help – including infographics which are one of my favourite things.  An alternative version, which first got the film on my radar, is from one of my favourite webcomics, XKCD.

Another reason to like this film is the fact that it’s free.  You can watch it right now on Google video.  It lasts an hour and a quarter, will make you use your brain, and whilst it isn’t a barrel of laughs type of a film, it’s a more grounded take on how discoveries are made, exploited and then the consequences that follow.  Indeed, trying to work out what’s right or wrong in this context quickly becomes confusing, a worthwhile experience for anyone I think.

Go watch it, don’t worry about the plot too much, and enjoy the experience of being uncertain.

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I’ll admit that my reasons were selfish, there were two workshops being run this year: one to share ideas and techniques, the other an artistic process.  Given that both these followed a performance by those running the workshop the evening before I could hardly miss them.

My only criticism of the whole affair would be the difficulty in finding the venues – and I’ve been to them before!  Given that it’s going to be dark at 8pm in October none of the entrances from the roads were lit or any signposts, resulting in being late for one performance and missing another entirely!  May I humbly suggest even just a large canvas sign that marks the turning you need to take off the main road – so that those of us driving over don’t miss out.  Both Lakeside Arts and Sandfield Theatre are so hidden from view, that I never even found the latter.  Of course, next time you can bet that I’ll being doing daytime reckie drives and getting full and complete instructions from friends before heading off (I swear Sandfield Theatre has moved!)

My involvement therefore was limited to the two workshops and their performances the night before.  The first, ‘The Swimmer’ by Rachel Krische, I missed the first half of, but thankfully those of us who were late (a fair sized group in the end) were allowed in to enjoy the second half of her piece.  Whilst the piece is improvised each time, there are strict rules, an improvisation score, and a specific improvisation technique used in this piece and it was these interacting layers that Rachel was able to introduce us to in the workshop.

The workshop itself was a wonderful process.  Rachel’s piece derives from choreography by Deborah Hay, and her teaching on awareness in dance.  The joining of these two areas that I have recently thrown myself into was hugely enjoyable and quite moving.  Seeing how these different layers of movement, awareness, internal questioning, and movement score could all interact and be maintained as a loose whole within the mind of the performer was fascinating and personally very inspiring.  I hope that I will be able to impart some of this in the work that I am doing at the moment with Chaos.

I still find it difficult to explain what the workshop involved, without just writing it out in minute detail, but the end result was dance that invited you to watch it, and without necessarily intending to communicate any great meaning or purpose was still captivating and engrossing to watch.  Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes playful, sometimes lost, it didn’t restrict itself to one thing but was open and free – the constraints of the score and movement serving to simply provide a frame in which to express oneself creatively.  A throughly enjoyable process to watch and to participate in, I am very glad I was able to experience this from both points of view.

At the same event as Rachel’s performance was a piece by Robert Hylton called ‘I don’t know, what do you think?’  Worth mentioning for his use of voiceover, and a beautiful piece of body-popping to Iranian drumming.  It involved the audience’s direct feedback and interaction, an interesting idea, but one that generally felt like under-rehearsed improvisation (if that doesn’t sound like too much of an oxymoron).  Those parts where he had clearly had time to develop them on his own were highly enjoyable, but the interaction with the audience felt a little awkward – which to be fair is something you can’t rehearse except in performance and this was the piece’s first outing.

The second evening’s performance I went to see was Oblivia’s ‘Entertainment Island 1′.  The first of three performances the group are developing from 2008 to 2010.  This is not an easy piece to watch, it lasts 50 minutes and seeks not to entertain but to show the core of what popular entertainment is.  There is a lot of repetition, but since their movement is not fixed to one meaning this means the audience has plenty of time to allow different interpretations and understandings of what is being shown to arise.  They describe their process as taking an idea that is too big, i.e. popular culture, and then working on it to produce something tangible and performable.  Given my current fascination with the idea of the new Information Age and its impact on global society, the idea of being able to find a route to dance was very appealing, even though my final style would almost certainly differ wildly from that of Oblivia.

Two of the artists ran the workshop the following morning, and with a group of just 4 attendees it was a wonderfully intimate and immediate environment – feedback was almost instant as we passed work between ourselves.  Given that Oblivia is a group of 3-4 artists themselves it was useful to try their practices in such a small group as well.

Oblivia is not a dance group, though movement is important in their performance, and as such the workshop was not dance focussed, but the framework of a process that we worked through is transferable enough for me to be able to take those parts that appealed and apply them to my current piece with Chaos.  Doing Qi Gong as a warm-up was a fun experience, and the size of the group meant that when we started to do creative warm-ups to connect we were already reading each other well after only 30-40 minutes of meeting most of the people in the room!

For me, the most interesting part of the process was the letting go of ownership of ideas by swapping work between the two pairs.  First we swapped ideas, then the development of those ideas and then we performed what we saw straight after creating a natural process of decay of superfluous parts of the performance, and a sifting of only those memes, concepts or ideas that stayed in your head.  Interestingly enough I managed to completely miss out the fact that the phrase I had just seen had started with the declaration “I’m going to kill myself!” – an impactful lesson in what is and isn’t picked up by the viewer.  This process of repeating what you’ve just seen was a wonderful way to explore ideas that are easily repeated, I’m not sure if it would work with dance that involved lifts or partner work, but as always in Chaos, it is by trying to take on each other’s movement that we learn to push outside of our own known comfort zone, and the results of trying to repeat this in a different context will be illuminating whatever the quality of the result.

I learnt a lot from this year’s festival (not least how to find Lakeside Arts in the dark) and I look forward to more of Dance4′s calendar throughout the year.

And another thing…

Another very important aspect of the workshops, and which applies to both of them, was the opportunity to meet some wonderful people.  Knowing that you have a shared interest to start with someone, and going through these engaging learning experiences together is a wonderful way to make new friends and I’m very pleased to have managed to get an email address or two with a view to making more dance happen in the future.  I don’t want to use the N-word, but the opportunity to make new connections and relationships is of massive value for all involved.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Antipode
• Music & Art Festival
• Sense of Self