Category Archives: improvisation life

Jan22

lighten up

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“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

       “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
― Mary Oliver

You cannot really disconnect yourself from the passionate, desirous being that you are. It was with enormous clarity that you came forth into this body, and that’s why when you try to hold your desire down, it keeps coming up…Your cork will always float unless you are holding it down. — Abraham

 I have been holding down the cork of my love for my daughter.  That cork  gets heavy and shitty with my disgust and anger at her choices.  But my cork needs to float.  Because that cork is attached to all the other corks – my love for myself, my wife, my work and on and on like a big net of floats, and the more I push that one cork down, the more it drags on the others.

So I am going to let the light enter, which can feel like hard work when all you see and feel is the wound.  This morning Pam and I shared some laughter around breakfast and realized that we had not done that for a long time, that we have grown somber and heavy with hurt.  Time to shine, time to brighten, time to love. That is my prayer for this day, this life.

Here is some serious light, a gift sent to me by one of my gorgeous goddesses, Suzanne.

Murmuration from Islands & Rivers on Vimeo.

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Jan14

get lost

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I read this story in the New Yorker about the street dancer Storyboard P with interest.  The same week, I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC and was drawn to this ancient dancer.  A week later, I performed my new solo – The Traveler (Moth to the flame) – at the APAP Booking Dance showcase at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

All of this has me thinking about why I/we dance, and where these dances come from. About intention, inspiration, improvisation as a political act, and improvisation as passionate gesture.  About the body and what it desires, what it demands, where it takes us and how often we do not go along for the ride.  About rhythm, stillness and listening. About finding and losing oneself in the movement and the moment.

There was one moment in my performance where I forgot where I was going.  It was an interesting, rich moment – a kind of time-space hiatus.  I wasn’t worried, more curious and astonished by both the emptiness and the possibilities.  Then the movement I had rehearsed pushed through, but it was somehow different, re-infused and invigorated by that momentary hush.  I am building work differently now – more intuitively and at the same time the process feels canny, knowing.  Throughout, I focus on getting lost to find it.

At APAP I shared a dressing room with the brilliant Claire Porter, and two beautiful French men – Manuel Vignoulle and Isaies Santamaria Perez.  At one point Isaies said, “I only want to dance.”  Me too.  Well, I also want to write and ride, but the dancing is first.  It is the hardest, wildest place.  It is where I can get lost and found, over and over again.

Here is another seeker.

Jan6

transitions

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You enter a new segment anytime your intentions change: If you are washing dishes and the telephone rings, you enter a new segment. When you get into your vehicle, you enter a new segment. When another person walks into the room, you enter a new segment.

If you take the time to get your thought of expectation started even before you are inside your new segment, you will be able to set the tone of the segment more specifically than if you walk into the segment and begin to observe it as it already is.

Esther and Jerry Hicks, Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires

Last year I gave an e-course called Breaking into Blossom.  It was about moving into an improvisational life, becoming more playful and intuitive in our daily lives, our work (play) and relationships. I loved the Abrahamic strategy called “segment intending” and wove it into the course.

Today I was riding and used it to focus myself during each phase of the ride.  The ride felt like it made more sense, and as if each part of the work was clearer between us.  I also could feel that I was not dragging anything that didn’t go so well with me into the next segment.  At the same time, there was a cumulative sense of harmony and attunement.

Why think about this?  Looking at your day this way is a way to create a conscious shift from one state to another. Think about it as an opportunity to re-boot, to create a mindful shift at many points during the day. It is also a way to feel yourself entering and exiting, beginning and ending. Even if you just get up from your desk or your practice to make a cup of tea, you are leaving one segment and entering another. An interruption of a work cycle by a telephone call is another segment. Another opportunity. What I like is nourishing mindfulness about each of those changing states.

You can buy the eBook, Breaking into Blossom, here

 

Jan1

for the new year

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This is my favorite poem. It is like nothing else. For those of you who have not read it, or those who never tire of reading it, this is my wish for the New Year: to break into blossom every day, to open and then open more – to the moment, to each other, to possibility and delight. Happy New Year!

A Blessing

by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

“A Blessing,” by James Wright, from Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose. ©Wesleyan University Press, 1990. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)