continuations

[I decided to take the train home from the conference because it was something I've always wanted to do -- riding the rails along the coast from Tacoma to San Jose. This photo is from the Amtrak website, and features lush green hills and a train winding along the cliff above the ocean.]

Hey hi hello dear friends! I'm back from my internet vacation (and Watson!) and so full of love and thoughts and questions and enthusiasm that I can't wait to share with you! Having spent the summer camping at the "Clown Farm" (or more formally, the Manitoulin Conservatory for Creation and Performance); it's been both a delight and a bit of a culture shock to be out of the woods and back in my home town. Lucky for me I was born into a very goofy family, which eases the transition.

In the spirit of improvisation, a few months back I decided not to make any concrete plans for post-Watson life until I actually got home, and to continue in the style of my project by figuring things out on the fly. I have to admit, now that I'm looking straight into this wide-open expanse of uncertainty I do feel some anxiety, but it also gives me such a thrill -- the possibilities feel infinite. At the Watson conference, the staff kept reiterating that this moment should hopefully feel like a beginning and not an ending, and the degree to which that resonates has surprised me. I am bewildered by the confidence in my own voice when I say "I've decided to be an artist" (wtf?!), and for that I have so, so, so many people to thank. I am endlessly, inexpressibly grateful and eternally indebted to all of the people I have met (this year and before and after) who have influenced me, supported me, and given me room to be full and happy and alive. If you're reading this, whether or not we've met in person, you are in some intricate way a part of my journey and I'm grateful to you (and the many others who will never read this) for being in my life.

I have a lot a lot a lot to say, and even more to hear and listen to and learn from – more than I know what to do with right now! I'm thinking a lot about ways of processing and sharing some of what I've been working on recently, and I'll hopefully have more to offer you soon. For now, I'll share some of what I said in my Watson presentation (I did a 3 minute clown piece and then gave a little talk afterward, the latter of which I'm paraphrasing and rewriting below).

It is such an honor to be able to write this, and to be heard. Like all Watson fellows this year and every year, I studied improvisation. In my case, that study was explicit – my project explored improv theatre, but it also became meta; it quickly turned into an exploration of improv life – because how could it not? I happen to live in a body that constantly invites me to improvise – having Brittle Bones, I can often fling myself around onstage without so much as a scratch only to leave the theatre, step off a curb, and fracture my foot – unexpected plot twists abound! Although I was upfront about that in my interview and application process, I wasn't totally honest with myself about how that would affect my project and my plans when I started out. I ended up having to let go of the meticulous itinerary I had designed and embrace opportunities as they made sense for me moment-to-moment, one at a time. I took a medical deferral, left a whole year later than planned, became a wheelchair-user, and changed my project significantly in ways I could never have anticipated – in this way, I was blessed with some good hard lessons in improvisation from the get-go!

And on that note, I wonder if part of my initial attraction to improv theatre was that it offers me a way of playfully engaging with my own unpredictable body – and even more so, the incomprehensibly unpredicable, delicate nature of all human bodies, the terrifying instability of our environment (which many fellows studied this year), the absurd fragility of our existence. In improvisation, I was and am searching for a way of being here, in my body, in this moment, with all of you – because it is all we have. Although I didn't find an answer to the fundamentally unstable nature of reality in a pub-basement improv show, and in fact I'm coming home with much messier thoughts on improv than I left with, this year I did catch glimpses of what I came to think of as infinities. By that I mean the infinite possibility we encounter when we let go of what we think we are or what we think we should be, and we open ourselves to what we actually are right now in this moment, and what we could be from there. When we soften the sharp edges of “self.” Of course I tend to think of the self in a performative way, so I explored this via improv, movement, dance, clown, and other art forms, but I also noticed this softening in all sorts of everyday ways -- I think it happens any time we get lost in a story, any time we play, any time we are emotionally moved and affected, any time we ask for help, any time we love. In all these and so many other moments we let ourselves come undone, we lose ourselves. Which in tiny or huge ways opens us up to our infinities. Each time we respond to each other and the world openly, vulnerably, and authentically we are improvising, because we are letting go of what we thought we were and allowing ourselves into the endless process of becoming. Uncertain, trusting. Infinite.

We live in a world where it is so difficult for most of us to feel seen. Which is pretty weird, since we are constantly looking at each other – often in violent, voyeuristic ways – but I'm sure you can relate to the difficulty of feeling truly seen and heard for the fullness and richness and complexity of your humanity. It's hard. There are structures in place that prevent us from seeing and being with each other. Honestly, I don't think that improv theatre can automatically “solve” that for the world. But it has given me an exquisite jumping off point in challenging those structures, opening up to my own and other people's infinities, and finding spaces where the chaos and fragility of our humanity is celebrated. And for that I am enormously grateful.

I want to spend the rest of my life in those celebratory spaces of HERE and NOW and WITH YOU and I want to make them more common and more accessible to others. It was terribly exciting to hear about other projects last weekend because it reminded me that there are as many ways to engage with that necessary work as there are people in the world. So much love and gratitude to everyone who is opening themselves up to that – fellow Watsons and all those who made this year possible for us and the endless network of humans we encountered this year who allowed us to see and be seen, and beyond that, everyone who hears stories, everyone who plays, everyone who improvises, everyone who loves - which is probably everyone - I love you and the full, messy, fragile chaos of what you are and what you are becoming. Infinitely.