report: hearts, dreams, rest.
[my most recent monthly self-portrait. A stylized version of me wears a green dress and stands against a green wall, with light orange California poppies growing out of my face. The word "MARCH" in handwritten orange letters in the bottom left corner].
Oh, bus rides! I've already mentioned the strange comfort they give me: watching landscapes roll by and feeling myself in transition from one place to the next. After a period of whirlwind-busy bewilderment (in summary: six weeks of firsts – first contemporary dance residency, first time giving notes, first experience directing improv, first improvised Soapathon, first improvised Shakespeare, first time lighting a show, first first firsts that have me all switched on about learning more and more and more. I AM SO EXCITED!!!), I was looking forward to some quiet time staring out the window. But it ALWAYS so happens that I end up seated next to the chattiest person around, even on a nearly empty bus! This time from Adelaide to Melbourne it was J, a quirky 74-year-old man who asked me why I was writing down my food spendings and when I told him I was on a budget, gave me this gem of advice:
“Buy a tin of beans and sell that ruddy gold stud in your nose.”
Now I'm happily settling into Melbourne, hanging in the soft sunshine with Bobbi the cat, who alternates between fly-hunting and lazing around on the bed. I'm giving myself permission to slow down, rest up, reflect and report. Spent much of my first two days here in the enormous State Library of Victoria working on my final quarterly report for the Watson Fellowship, a process that I absolutely cherish. (I was a little sad to turn in my last one.) Rereading my previous report was like finding that missing puzzle piece under the couch-cushion and suddenly remembering how much you love puzzles and how excited you are to work on that one again. Everything I had expressed craving in my last report – more time spent in one place, more playfulness and joy onstage, more structure, challenge, and intensity in my performance practice – came true! WOW I am a lucky little human. It was also a reassuring reminder that as chaotic and uncertain as I often feel, deep down there's a part of me that really knows what I want and need.
Sometimes I worry about being self-involved. During the Quantum Clown Residency back in January I would occasionally revel in the solo exercises – it was like my heart shattered open and this ridiculous raging joy would pour out from nowhere and fling me around the room and people would laugh and I would totally just bask in it – and afterward I felt guilty. One day I told Ira that I loved these exercises but feared I was being self-indulgent. He looked me in the eyes and said “haley. You are self indulgent. That is your virtue.”
I'm still holding on to that puzzle piece, trying to understand where it fits. Sometimes I have a snarky little voices in my brain that says things like, 'Oh haley, other Watsons are solving important issues and you are flinging yourself around onstage and becoming a clown. Who do you think you are?' I'd be lying if I tried to deny those thoughts. But I now know that's not my heart speaking – it's my brain and my ego and a whole lot of other things that may have some validity in small doses but that probably don't deserve to determine the direction of my life. When these sorts of thoughts come up, I process them by saying: well, what is important to me? My answers usually include enthusiasm, love, expression, peace, questions, complexity, connections, conversations, incremental and exponential change, chickens, playfulness, being an idealist, being honest, being vulnerable, being as alive as I can possibly be. It's important to me that people feel represented in, included in, touched by, challenged by, and transformed by the arts. That art helps people remember they are alive.
Somehow those answers, even incoherently, make me feel less like hating on myself for following my dreams. (In response to my first quarterly report, Sneha my Watson mentor encouraged me to “follow your dreams with such passion that your fears can't catch up”). Of course I want to do my part in helping save the world. Desperately. When I allow myself to really feel how unbelievably screwed up the world is I almost drown in my desire to help. But I have the inkling that doing what I “think” will help won't make much of a dent unless my heart is in it. So I am learning about my heart and figuring out where to put it.
I guess I am an unusual traveler. I tend not to sightsee and am woefully unaware of the tourist checklist in almost every place I go. Sometimes people are judgmental about this. Honestly though, it's probably not gonna change. I've seen some beautiful sights – ancient mountains and churches, full moons, pastoral hillsides, buzzing bush-lands, radical street-art, wild lorikeets and koalas. But most of these were stumbled upon by happy accident, little moments of luminance in an improvised life. And of all beautiful things, the tiny huge moment where one person is affected by another – the gentle softening in their breath, in their eyes – this is the most beautiful thing I have seen. I feel extraordinarily lucky to be able to pursue work that nurtures those moments. (!!!!!!!!!)
I have huge, wild dreams. Yesterday I took a risk and inked the word “SHOW” into my planner for September 5th, a month after I return home. I have no ideas – just beaming jittery exhilaration – but a friend told me I would have to pick a date and a title if I ever want to put a show up (thanks Imogen!). I've been sketching and brainstorming a mobile (accessible!) theatre-space, casually picking brains and collecting ideas and drawing plans. I want to create an impro duo and I have an outline for our first rehearsal scrawled into my journal already. I hope to apply to Del'Arte in California next winter. So many dreams.
In the mean-time, I'm dreaming about the rest of my Watson year. After nine months of practice, I can articulate what I need in order to grow. I need to settle in one place for a while and develop relationships there, but also find ways to make it feel fresh and exhilarating when I start to get comfortable. I need to spend the next few months learning about my body and physicality – both how to care for it sustainably and how to express with it creatively – exploring, challenging, and reveling in its patterns of movement, searching for its comedic and dramatic possibilities, and just all-around engaging in physical activity and PLAY. I also need to start gathering and collecting what I have learned in a low-pressure, organic way. This might take the form of offering to facilitate more workshops, or rereading my journals from the year (five and counting), or creating illustrations of important experiences and lessons, or collaborating on an improv/performance zine with some of the friends I've made, or beginning to work on “SHOW.” (That's the current title). Perhaps it will involve all of these or perhaps it will be something else entirely. I leave that up to the gods of improvisation.
I made a little list of the things that make me feel most alive, and uncoincidentally, these are also the things that help me grow:
physical stretching, moving, and playing every day
collaborating with creative people
working super hard
reading books
making things
eating lots of fruit
being busy but making time to journal, decompress, and socialize some
being barefoot
being outside
being onstage
being in natural bodies of water
having a few fulfilling relationships
being seen and seeing others in complex, holisitc, loving ways
laughing
I'm heading to Glasgow on March 25th and am tremendously enthusiastic about the improvisations that await me there. I've also done some meticulous budget calculations and realized I can make my stipend last until the Watson conference in August (!) so I applied and was accepted to the Manitoulin Conservatory for Creation and Performance this summer. I am so absurdly excited I can hardly contain myself!!! A lot of buddies I've met so far have encouraged me to go; it's everything I could hope for to end this journey and start another: outdoors, intense, structured, introspective, community-oriented, and with the support and push to develop original material!
It feels right to spend the next few months focusing more on improvised dance and giving explicit attention to my body as a conduit for performance, art, and expression – especially seeing as my quirky little body and its defiance of category has been such an enormous theme to my year.
Improvisation has been so much more to me than I could have anticipated. I think I needed to study improvisation in order to understand, accept, play with, and challenge my relationship to the world as a disabled person. This will be a lifelong process, but in recent months I've started to feel a little more peaceful about it. I noticed that my final report was the first one where I haven't spent most of it writing about my wheels and consequential frustrations – that feels really good. It feels good to write about it but even better not to feel like I have to. Perhaps it's because Adelaide and Brisbane were a relatively accessible cities, perhaps it's that I'm more grounded in myself, perhaps it's that I've had the pleasure of working with other disabled artists. Whatever the reason, I'm really freaking glad about it. It's a fact that spending less time worrying about how to get around and how people perceive me has freed me to start exploring more as an artist. And developing into a stronger artist in general will allay some of the fears I have about being seen as / identifying as a “disabled artist” in the first place.
My wheelchair IS on my mind right now actually, mostly because I have a tiny fracture in my hand which means I can't use it at the moment. This is an interesting period of forced re-evaluation. I have now been consistently stellarizing around town for over nine months – navigating new cities and public transit and cobblestone and grass with increasing speed, confidence, and even (occasional) grace. On wheels I am fast, safe, and efficient. But walking even just a few city blocks in Melbourne from the hostel to the library felt utterly precarious. It's not that my body can't handle it (as previously mentioned, my body revels in being flung around onstage and in physically demanding theatre), it's more that the world is unpredictable and jagged, and that people are impatient with slow-movers who are not obviously elderly or visibly disabled. I'm hoping to heal quickly so that I can get back on wheels - I didn't realize how limited I am without them. But this realization is strangely joyous because a year ago I was SO disappointed about having to do the Watson on wheels, And now I can see that it was absolutely positively undeniably the right choice for me! Yes, there are so many ways in which wheels complicate travel. But those have been worth it considering the freedom, flexibility, and joy that stella gives me.
Things feel right. They feel chaotic and absurd and unreal and blissful and terrifying at times, but also really right. There is infinitely more I could say but this post is already so much longer than usual and this feels like the right place to stop for now.
Sending love across all the lands to all the humans who are a part of my life.
