Photo: Pam White
And have you finally figured out what beauty is for
And have you changed your life?
Mary Oliver
postscript: This week The Journal is about what is inside and outside of our personal comfort zones. Inspired by my brilliant daughter.
Photo: Jeffrey Anderson, from Flight, with Dillon Paul and Sanne
A horse appeared to me. It was a horse I had known from some long ago time. Who knows what that long ago was, but the horse was very present, and I could smell the horse, and the horse was very familiar. It seemed to be someone I know from long ago, and so I felt I knew the horse well. I was very happy to see it, so happy that tears ran down my cheeks. Joy Harjo
This week in The Journal I am writing about callings. I am interested in the difference between a calling and a yearning, between lust and desire. I have some stories about my own callings, and how they shape what is here now. I got to thinking about this a number of yeas ago when I read Gregg Levoy’s Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life.
My post yesterday about the herd also reminded me that callings are usually embodied. That is what Joy Harjo is talking about. And a few of you mentioned that not everyone is that clear about how to communicate in an embodied way.
Actually, that is a major theme of my online class beginning next week: Breaking into Blossom. The subtitle of the class is “moving into an improvisational life,” and so much of that, in my experience, is about being fully present in an embodied way – deep listening with the body. My intention is that by learning to live more intentionally and improvisationally, and be more consciously embodied, you will find new and delicious ways of experiencing/approaching work and play.
I hope you will join us. You can register here.
Ngonda Badila is Lady Moon. Her song, Speak to the Light, is one of the most lovely pieces of music that I have ever heard. She sings it during the performance of Xmalia, the show created by C. Ryder Cooley.
The first time I heard it, I did not think that the sound was coming out of a human body, it was so etheric, so wildly beautiful. When I watched her performance last weekend with Ryder on trapeze, it moved me to tears.
You can listen to it online, but better still, you can see and hear Lady Moon in person at the upcoming MCLA performance of Xmalia on January 25 at 7:30 in North Adams, MA.
postscript: This week The Journal is about callings. How we feel them, and a few ragged ones of my own. Breaking into Blossom starts next week. This is an online class about moving into an improvisational life, about lessening the commute between what you think of as creative and everything else. I hope you will join us. You can register here.
I was drawn to this image because its intimacy, the quiet focus of the artist who is also the art. One of the themes that I will be exploring in January is the way that art and life intersect. It will also be a big part of the focus of Breaking into Blossom, the online course on moving into an improvisational life that begins on January 23.
Many years ago, I took a workshop with the brilliant Eiko & Koma. I remember Eiko saying that she and Koma do not commute between their art and life. For them it is a seamless whole.
I am a householder. I have animals, a lot of them. They are a beautiful, essential part of every day. But their presence means that there are a million little moments in every day that are not art. Scooping poops, feeding dogs, cats, cleaning up vomit and pee. Brushing, walking, touching. As I said, not art. Or what can feel like a lot of little, niggly commutes.
Having said that, there is a way to be with those necessities that is a rhythm, a practice, a yoga even. And there is a direct path from all of that ritual to my work, my writing, and definitely my choreography, which is full of beasts – hooved, pawed, winged.
Are you commuting?
postscript: This week, The Journal (the little ragged memoir) is about the ways that I have taken art art into and onto my body. The how and the why of that, including the elaborate mapping of tattoos.