Tuesday, January 25, 2005

MANIFESTO I

My response to a provocative inquiry in an interview with myself:

ML: You ask me about the "usefulness" of dancing? First, let us acknowledge that somewhere in this question is the presumption that modern dancing can be useless, merely recreational or fanciful. Second, let me use this opportunity then to prescribe dance education for politicians, social workers, dictators, and bureaucrats, as much as for children, athletes, actors and acrobats.

The politician will learn a social and cultural empathy unavailable in journals or cabinet meetings. The politician must learn the motivation behind revolution in the streets by the revolution within his own body.
The social worker needs a break to celebrate human life after working so hard to sustain its most complicated elements.
The dictator may learn how it is to create something vital rather than regimented; something beautiful rather than brutal.
The bureaucrat may find cause to lessen or make more efficient everyday people's administrative tasks -- for in the dance studio, there is learning, there is sweat, there is community, there is fun!

Healthy, articulate bodies make easier healthy, articulate minds and hearts.
Invoking Erick Hawkins: "the body is a clear place."
Dance traditions are designed for clarity, economy, precision.

There are moral lessons to be learned in dancing, there is coaching in self-assertiveness and compassionate interaction. Dancing has every sortt of pedagogic value as a well-taught sport --
that in discipline, there is freedom and discovery;
that in balance, there is always movement;
that with violence, there will come justice.

Yet this does not mean that any setting of class labelled "dance" will necessarily present its benefits, the same way not everything labelled with goodwill, or the church, or even progressive humanism will. I am not here attempting to set a quantifiable standard upon which to judge good/bad, right/wrong, worthwhile/waste of time -- these are for the technicians and the insiders to battle out, a process healthy and required for the advancement and maturity of the form.

Me, I am an outsider to most things and an insider the same. The more you see, the less you belong, but all the more you have to share. Consciousness comes at the price of discomfort, but what you gain is in the loss itself. And that's OK. In everything durable, there is opposition -- this is another lesson I have learned in dance.

So the lessons are specific.

Specifically, how to release (weight, muscular tightness, memories, regrets, pride) and of how to retain (alignment, strength, integrity, faith), of how to catch and ride the wave of contingency and wash up on shore, sputtering or smooth surfing, either way.

The application is specific -- finding a movement style or movement culture that quickens your blood and helps you locate your center is everyone's personal project. The role of dance practitioners, the bearers of its progression, dissemination, and public display, is to remember that the source and resource of meaningful art is life, and that the price of clarity is sometimes to have to be a stranger to yourself in order to keep it real.

Being always in a hurry takes two hours to write about

I wrote a pleasant reflection on Sunday night, entitled "Appetite and Apathy," including some of the usual navel-gazing -- quite literally, if not navel-pinching, a habit resulting in my resignation to a life-long love-hate-necessity relationship with my belly and the fat around it -- but also some quality instances of compassionate humanism. I wrote about Fabrizio, my two-year-old housemate, who laughs so shrill he jumps in the air to meet his pitch and falls onto his bottom in glee, an action which is now among my favorite of dances yet. I wrote about the ginger-haired Tempest-reader on the N-train home who had the Union Jack sewn into his boots. I wrote about the woman who cooks and serves at the New Beijing Chinese restaurant a few steps away from my apartment building who walks with a limp. Then, it got deleted. I here pay homage to the death of my good thoughts, knowing that there will be others, but in true character I am still reluctant to let it go ...

(breathe)

OK! So to today. It is sunny and not as bitingly cold, and I am able to gather together lost parts of myself by gazing at a clear blue sky. I look forward to the future again. I am in seated in one of the three locations where New York City happens for me: the dance studio (any of many), the subway, and Starbucks coffee, where I may buy a token beverage, but otherwise shamelessly bring in my pack lunch and soak up their electricity to feed my computer similarly. In the winter, it is hard to find a low cost reprieve in the middle of the day, especially one as ubiquitous as this. There are 150 Starbucks outlets in Manhattan alone, I dare say I have found at least seven of them in my four weeks here so far.

* * *

I have often wished that I could draw, but now I will simply paint with words. There sits on the couch seat next to mine an elderly man with beautiful, deep contours on his highly sketchable face. He sits with his left hand lightly supporting his head -- fingers to temple, thumb to cheek -- a ballpoint loosely fitted between. He may be reading from the loose leaf, hand-written notes on his lap held by his right hand, but from the gentle heaving of his chest I think he is asleep. He seems of good European stock, almost elfin ears that point at the upper tips, a narrow yet sculpted and long nose, a squat face (receded as it is into the folds of his lapel). His thumb moves and squeezes some of the flaccid cheek flesh against the bone. He has three distinct indentations on that cheek, or rather, three layers piled on top of each other. He has horizontal-wishbone-wrinkles marking the lower recesses of his eyes, and one strong crease down the center of his forehead that splices faint frown lines across it. He wears blue denim jeans, a black denim jacket, and a black beanie hat. I try to imagine what his voice might sound like – warbly like his chin, or strong like the history he seems to carry? He woke with a start and an inhale – I wonder from what alternate reality he has been carried back to this one? I smile at the thought of the universality – by this, I mean common experience – of waking just like he did, a reaction to impromptu, almost illicit midday slumber, so soon alert and present … so unlike the morning.

* * *

Quote:

"STARTING next week, working in an operating and grant-making foundation, I will have to retrain parts of my brain. That may not make me a big man on hippocampus, but it means less of the horizon-gazing that required me to take positions on everything going on in the world; instead, a welcome verticalism will drive me to dig more deeply into specific areas of interest. Fewer lone-wolf assertions; more collegial dealing. I hear that's tough.

But retraining and fresh stimulation are what all of us should require in "the last of life, for which the first was made." Athletes and dancers deal with the need to retrain in their 30's, workers in their 40's, managers in their 50's, politicians in their 60's, academics and media biggies in their 70's. The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril.

... Intellectual renewal is not a vast new government program, and to secure continuing social interaction deepens no deficit. By laying the basis for future activities in the midst of current careers, we reject stultifying retirement and seize the opportunity for an exhilarating second wind. ... When you're through changing, learning, working to stay involved - only then are you through. "Never retire." "

-- William Safire, "Op-Ed Quartet: A Columnist's Farewell," New York Times 01/24/2005

Thoughts:

Firstly: “big man on hippocampus.” What a great line!

Secondly, as life philosophy: Safire’s mantra is pertinent to any packaging of time one may choose. A performer must “never retire” in their embodiment of a character (which may last the length of a play, say, two hours), in their execution of a movement sequence (which may last, with equal difficulty, any sum of minutes), in their commitment to it as a vocational choice (life). The question at hand is: How can I discover the process to productive longevity, of my mind, of my body, of my faith?

I have an attitude problem when it comes to this sort of perseverance, I have trouble being patient, I have a lot of residual and immediate internal stress, I find it challenging to maintain relaxed consciousness as opposed to violent discovery or its counterpart, paralysis. Whew. I had to pause. See, even then, writing comes as rambles and nothingness. I wonder where this frequent state of emergency comes from. As the positive result of this current self-realization, I bring with me to class the understanding that I no longer need to keep dancing as if the dance class at hand is my last. There is in haste a sense of wanting to get it over and done with, as if living can be got over and done with and then would come the comfortable stillness of death, the satisfaction of having lived once, perhaps intensely, but not now, not again. Rather, what I am looking to engage in is psychophysical training in the practice of living calmly, continuously. I would like to approach these movement arts as exercises in focus and concentration. What I may grow to accept in this renewed understanding is that I may not, therefore, actually be seeking a career in the arts. OR, that my approach to a career in the arts is maturing, and I just don’t know how to recognize myself yet.

On being a lone-wolf with pack-ties and likening the wolf howl to the human need for expressive arts:
“Lois Crisler has said, “Like a community sing, a howl is a happy occasion. Wolves love to howl. When it is started, they instantly seek contact with one another, troop together, fur to fur. Some wolves will run from any distance, panting and bright-eyed, to join in, uttering, as they near, fervent little wows, jaws wide, hardly able to wait to sing.”
While the functions of howling are not fully understood … Once thing is certain, howling appears to be the glue that keeps the pack together and plays a role in the formation and/or the maintenance of strong bonds between other members of the pack.”
(http://www.wolfsongofalaska.org/)
On me? Maybe it's still OK (what is this constant mindplay of what is "OK" and correspondently, not "OK" to be, to pursue?!?!?! Obviously I have not yet grown out of the schooling mindset of right and wrong!) to approach expression with "fervent little wows"! I've been told in David Dorfman's class to relax and slow down; I've been admonished by Miguel Gutierrez to stick to the combination and not add anything extraneous (neither of which I was doing consciously). I respect both these statements as valid to accomplishing that which means excellence in their forms, and for finding calm in a torrent of movement. But something in me hungers also for the aliveness of fervent little wows and a big group howl!

Note:
“A wolf may spend up to a third of its time on the move.”

Note:
"Torrent" and "thirst" share the same Latin root, torrere, meaning to parch, to burn. Yet "Torrent" = 1 : a tumultuous outpouring; RUSH; 2 : a violent stream of a liquid (as water or lava); 3 : a channel of a mountain stream. I suppose the dryness inherent in the torrent is not so much its constitution (which is actually liquid), but it's destination; the initiation of the movement of the torrent, its quest, is to quench.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

On Everythingness and OK

"Dance has no denotations. You have to deal with it from a place of open imagery and multiplicitous thought. ... It's like saying to people: 'Everythingness is very valid. And to locate a single thought is idiotic and unrealistic. So if you're convinced that that's something you'd like to do, maybe you'd like to reconsider.'" - Tere O'Connor, Dance Europe

I really thought I believed in this, for the same reasons I clung to Socio/Anth theories of multiplicity, of the value of heterogeneity, of going post-modern, going past the subject-object, self-and-other dichotomies that rule our chocolate-vanilla universe. It's OK to be you, it's OK for me to be me, to be he, she, inter-, intra-, super-, -suffix, hyphen, bi-, tri-, mixed. Yet I realize that it's too easy to be lost in that lack of definition -- as Swarthmore Poli Sci professor James Kurth frightened us with (absent the performance aid of a fistful of all-purpose flour and an open window): "The ability to be anything is the ability to be nothing."

I have taken these sombre words deep to heart. It's been almost two years since. No longer everyday, but occassionally still (at the very least once a month, due to what I attribute to hormonal imbalance) I wake up trying to find some escape from thinking myself into oblivion with musings on the meaninglessness of everything or from eating myself similarly to extremes. I have embraced this busy city with double the population of my entire country because I have sought to forget myself, only to be reminded through the uprooting that I am once again alone, and stupidly so.

Then I relax, watch people, and feel better. I realize that I like being alone. That this is the only way I get around to writing, because when I am with people I talk all these thoughts out and promptly forget them, and their authenticity. I realize that I like writing. I realize that a writer, much more so than the lawyer and the pedagogue, must embrace everythingness, and that my self-diatribes are the conflict I have placed for myself by aspiring for the social sciences whilst intrinsically valuing the humanities.

I like discovering things about strangers. Upon seeing the familiar thickness and standard mahogany of your typical law textbook, I asked my neighbour at this cafe (OK, OK: it's Starbucks), yellow highlight in hand, if my intuition was right. Indeed: it is a Sport Law textbook -- "the home ec of the law curriculum" -- and he is taking his bar in New York come June, finishing up at American University in Washington, D.C. He is $175,000 in debt. He recommends his school if I want to pursue public interest or international law. He warns me that this would yet be impossible if I had the same debt buden coming out of school. After divulging an unintentional smidgen of my dance manifesto, he says I should write. (I still haven't been able to tell whether people tell me this because I really have something valuable to say, or because I have withdrawn from conversation and have started going off into my Itinerant Didact mode. Yet I still recall Abena Mainoo over the candlelight of our Swarthmore International Orientation's crum ceremony suggesting that I do write down all the advice I was then as a wizened if not bitter junior giving. Hi Abena -- I'm finally getting around to it.)

So law? Yeah, I'm thinking about it. I'm at the point where I miss studying, because it was something structured that I unquestionably had to do.
American Law? Yeah, I'm thinking about it. Above-mentioned guy tells me the NY bar is recognized in the EU. Ok!

Lastly, for this one very meandering entry -- back to dancing and to Tere O'Connor and to what I am learning of American modern dance. In what context is everythingness OK? Does the process of democratization necessarily entail the progression to accepting everythingness (the more there is, the more variety there is, the more you have to accept that anything is allowable, in this case, as art -- as good art)?

Behind these convuluted questions are my observations that (a) Tere O'Connor is no longer a highly physical dancer (using standard definitions of contemporary dance training of the body); (b) his movement sequences still take your breath away (i.e. are physically demanding), as there is a lot going on mentally because it is illogical (does not obey laws of fluidity or causality) -- so I can't complain about doing them, because they weren't facile; (c) such haphazardness nevertheless feels indulgent, if not illicit to me. How is it that I and my comrades here -- all 25 of them -- are each paying $22 per two-hour session for this relaxed, non-intensive, non-personalized, random expulsion of valuable energy? If it was simply to be exposed to this man's eccentricity, that would maybe be OK (what does "OK" stand for?), if there was some philosophy behind it all, some intention, rather than "I'm going to move any way in the hell I like, with no rootedness, no sense, no explication. Take it or leave it." Well, shit. Without rules of the game, there is no game. There is only chaos.


And about the origin of "OK"? From Cecil Adams, of The Straight Dope (.com): The etymology of OK was masterfully explained by the distinguished Columbia University professor Allen Walker Read in a series of articles in the journal American Speech in 1963 and 1964. The letters, not to keep you guessing, stand for "oll korrect." They're the result of a fad for comical abbreviations that flourished in the late 1830s and 1840s. Read buttressed his arguments with hundreds of citations from newspapers and other documents of the period. As far as I know his work has never been successfully challenged.The abbreviation fad began in Boston in the summer of 1838 and spread to New York and New Orleans in 1839. The Boston newspapers began referring satirically to the local swells as OFM, "our first men," and used expressions like NG, "no go," GT, "gone to Texas," and SP, "small potatoes." Many of the abbreviated expressions were exaggerated misspellings, a stock in trade of the humorists of the day. One predecessor of OK was OW, "oll wright," and there was also KY, "know yuse," KG, "know go," and NS, "nuff said."Most of these acronyms enjoyed only a brief popularity. But OK was an exception, no doubt because it came in so handy. It first found its way into print in Boston in March of 1839 and soon became widespread among the hipper element. It didn't really enter the language at large, however, until 1840. That's when Democratic supporters of Martin Van Buren adopted it as the name of their political club, giving OK a double meaning. ("Old Kinderhook" was a native of Kinderhook, New York.)
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_250

Sunday, January 02, 2005

The title always comes last

In response to surprising complaint about the lack of information being disseminated about my life to demanding friends and family (I thank you: I feel loved), and in the more critical effort to systematize my meandering thought processes and occasional profundities, and after the elaborate penning of a two-thousand-word email to someone I only just met but really wanted to tell stories to (in response to which he replied, "Wow -- have you ever thought of writing a blog?"), HERE I AM. It is January 2nd, 2005 (yes, I did type "4" first) in New York City, where I have sat on Anna Uma Morgan's bed figuring out this blog stuff since the mischievious winter sun struck me awake at a cruel 8:30am. I have been staying here courtesy of Anna's two week holiday at home in Orange County, CA, investigating the dance scene and the im/probability of my moving up from Philadelphia.

It has been a rewarding week.

In every dance class, I translate the teacher's advice and admonitions on alignment, placing, or any other physical technicality into what I have learned from Jacek and Ania in Poland, and this is a comforting 'gathering together' of segmented periods of my life. This is perhaps why the only place I can understand my holistic self, where I feel whole and genuine, the only place I consider "home," is the dance studio. My compulsion to continue dancing over and above any other vocational choice is indeed that: compulsive, maybe obsessive, maybe a disorder? For this, I criticize myself, finding some poetic way of describing my travels as an "adrenalin addiction" rather than 'fess up that dancing is maybe a labor of vanity.

Tell me, what in the arts of self-expression is not the labor of vanity? As choreographer Tere O'Connor -- with whom I will take class next week because of this statement -- notes in an interview in December's Dance Europe, "Just going 177% into your personal voice is something that rocks people. No one has to do that in their life."

I want to rock people!