A Journey to the Middle of the Continent to Remind me to Choose

Pianta, from On the Wall

A 4-day trip to Kansas City, hosted by my cousin, who invited me and my husband Fang (thus-named during this trip after comedienne Phyllis Diller's husband whom no one ever saw-- much like my Fang) to join he and his band and crew who were there to record a jazz album in the heart of this historical jazz city. My job was to help film the recording sessions for future promotions of the album. [http://www.thetimhenryexperience.com/thetimhenryexperience/Home.html]

Out of my California element there in KC, among excellent musicians, talented recording technicians, arrangers, and video artists, but all the same somehow thinking that no one in this group of midwestern artists would get what I do with my experimental movement films. Cool people, but feeling that what MAE and Bold Hen Productions do would not be received positively. Pure speculation, perhaps, but self-doubt has always been a nasty little daimon on my shoulder.

I had brought along 3 of our short videos to show, but got cold feet and didn't show them. I think to understand what we do takes a certain willingness to leave all known parameters and risk humiliation, failure, the chance that where your muse led you, a place you found to be of such depth, complexity, and higherTruth and Beauty, is nothing more than the place of your weird, delusional twists and kinks. Far away from home, it began to seem that when looked at through rational eyes, my muse-appointed place is nothing more than pointless crap.

Some time back I did an improv dance workshop in San Diego with choreographer, dancer, and director,  Katie Duck, http://katieduck.com/Home.html an American working in Amsterdam. The enormous thing I took away from Katie's workshop was from a structured improvisation wherein the dancers experimented creating the performance space by shifting back and forth between being audience/observers and performers. We would stand, all facing the same direction, demarcating the performance space with our gaze. Whenever we were inspired to, we would transform from the role of audience member to performer by simply moving into the performance space and beginning to dance. So the dancers were each continually on her/his individual volition and impulse, flowing back and forth between the role of audience and performer.

From time to time, members of the audience would impulsively move to a completely different place on the stage and face a new direction to create a new and different performance space. Those who were in the performance space at that moment would have to pay attention or they would be left dancing to no audience. And what's a performer without an audience?

What struck me like a bolt about this creation was that Katie stressed the concept of choose. Especially when contemplating whether to move or not to move from audience into the performance space. For me it was like choosing to dive into an ice cold swimming pool from the topmost high-diving board.The idea that one must choose and then immediately ACT! Omigod!

For a hesitant, slow-thinking/moving dillly dallier like me, I suddenly saw how strange this was-- the complete opposite of how I operate in life. Indecisive, irresolute, dawdling, tentative, hemming, hawing... that's me!

But Katie's voice shouting as I stood dangling at the precipice, CHOOSE! CHOOSE! seemed a command from an very high place. It might as well have been accompanied by trumpets and an angel chorus. CHOOSE, BABY! then GO! ACT! BOOMITY BOOM! What a concept!

So that's what I've decided to do. And I am choosing to go with these strange inner voices I have tatoo'd on the inside of my forehead: Follow where the muse leads --  I can't NOT do that. And it's scary!

I'm glad for the trip to KC, and I'm glad to be back in Callie.