Creative Fire aka I have horrible grammar and I don't proof read

I've been wondering this week if I would be better off if I were just one "thing". Although I have probably put the most energy into dancing in the six or so years I've been doing it, I am not by definition, just a dancer. I am a multi dimensional,directional, delusional type of artist person and I think it's part of what makes me crazy. I can be a painter, a doll maker, a writer, an interior designer and probably a bunch of other things I don't have the state of mind to list. Usually if I try something I can do it. (As an aside you can not know how incredibly hard it is for me to write that without the VOICE telling me what an egotistical thing that is to say. No, I don't hear voices, you know THE VOICE.) I just keep accumulating little skills and I find that it's driving me crazy. Sometimes there are so many options of things to do I feel paralyzed because I don't know where to start. So I don't.

Other times I get the fever. Now a lot of people including me know that the fever is really hypomania usually, but whether it is driven by chemical imbalances or not what it essentially is is the Creative Fire. I've been struggling with the fire this week. A large part of my house has been rearranged this week all because of it. It really just started with one little thought which just snowballed into a cacophony of ideas that did not really die down until yesterday. One after another 'oh do this.. oh wait and then this and I have to go over there and pick up this and oh geez no I don't like how that looks let's try it this way' and on and on it goes. It is both invigorating and exhausting at the same time, joyous and full of fury. I physically sweat through it, the fever burns in my brain and I feel it on my brow. It is madness and crazymaking and yet so essentially part of who I am that I can do nothing less than embrace it. No amount of medication has ever completely killed it and I don't really think that's a bad thing.

I just wish it didn't often interfere with the other art that I'm actually supposed to be making. I didn't dance once this week. Bad bad me hahaha.

Feeling October

The feel of the world has been playing tricks on me as of late. I find myself looking out the window and having the full feeling of October hit me, only to step out the door and realize that no, it is indeed August and it is 98 degrees outside. I'm sure it has something to do with the smoke in the air or even the fact that it's been an odd summer to begin with. I also may want to blame the fact that school starts earlier and earlier each year. I feel so bad watching those kids go back to school the second week of August. Horrible I say.

I have to be very careful this year not to rush along time. I keep taking calming breaths and reminding myself that I need to have the time in each day. I can't wish myself into October because there are too many important events between now and then. We have several weeks of rehearsals left before Desert Dance, and then some time before October and the Redwood Coast Belly dance Festival, and then comes Carnival of Stars the week after that. I don't want to get too excited wishing away the dregs of summer so that I wind up feeling completely unprepared. It's a habit I have. A bad one. Especially when it come to October.

I love October with every ounce of my being. October is not just a month for me but a complete state of mind. October winds come in and cleans away all the dust from the summer. I start to be able to breath a little bit better again. I watch the leaves on the Mulberry tree from my bedroom window. They sway in the wind with the fall sun glinting through them and they remind me of the sea. Before you know it there are more on the ground than on the tree. I've had bad things happen in October, but they've never seemed to be able to pull me down in the same way the bad things of other months do. October is my magic place and time between the worlds. October lets me forget it all and revel in the freedom that only a child can feel. A child running from house to house trick or treating in her wonder woman costume. Feeling invincible from head to toe and laughing when the rain starts to fall.

But this year I won't rush October, it'll make it all the more sweet when it comes.

I need to write something. This is something I often find echoing in my mind a lot. I am a rebel though and don't always take direction well, certainly not from myself.

Today I was folding laundry, something I sometimes enjoy doing just for the reason that it is such an "artist's brain" activity for me. It often gets the brain off and running. This time I started thinking about a piece of homework that had been given to us. List 25 words that mean Happy, Sad and Angry... do not use a thesaurus. So I kept a list for two weeks sitting next to my computer and anytime no matter where I was when I thought of a word I found a way to make not of it. So I had lists of synonyms for these words. Apparently when this assignment was turned in some of us did it this way and some of us listed 25 things that made us feel that way. The next stage is to flip it around and do it opposite of how you did it the first time. I know this exercise would be super easy for me. I mean who can't list 25 things that piss them off. Nifty. However as I was folding laundry I started to thing, what is angry? What is Happy? What is Sad?

I realized that these states that we all take for granted as being a kind of they are what they are thing are also highly subject to personal perspective just like everything else. I have never even taken the time in my life to ask these questions. I can't believe that I haven't since I am so highly fascinated by the concept that no two people ever experience anything in exactly the same manner. I mean how could I miss the fact that those three emotions (and how many others?) must feel completely different to different people.

Something that I found even more disturbing was the fact that I couldn't easily describe these states in myself. What does Happy feel like. What physical sensations are there? what emotional content is there at that moment? How is the world appearing to my eyes at that moment? Although, I am seeing the importance of these questions today I have not yet sat down and tried to answer them. I think perhaps this is the next logical step to take for this kind of work.

I think it's probably especially important when working in a group. What if a choreographer is asking for a specific feeling or emotion from a group, but yet each individual in that group has a different interpretation of what that emotion is? Perhaps then it's important to look at what specific emotion works with the individual to create a cohesive look throughout the group? Ten different emotions all creating the same expression?

All just things rattling around in my brain at two in the morning. It's not like I think this isn't anything that hasn't already been discussed ad nauseam. It's just something I personally haven't looked at too much.