(Not A) Soft-Serve Ice cream Twist

    image excerpted from video collaboraton with John Manson


I originally wrote this on July 2, 2015. I just let it sit around, but the photo above reminded me again of my feelings about different types of collaborations, so it's time to expand and share.

There are good collaborations and there are great collaborations.  Who do you collaborate with and why?  You like somebody's work, they like yours, you needed a musician and so-and-so was available..... who knows!?!  Some reasons are better than others and a lot has to do with chance.

The majority of my creative work has been collaborative.  As an improvisor this seems quite inevitable.  Any improvisation is collaborative..since each person involved is contributing her/his own ideas rather than executing the choreographer's or composer's score.

For me, a great collaboration is one that goes beyond one talented artist contributing her stuff and combining it with another talented artist's stuff.   This "stuff" could be dance with music, a model with a photographer or painter, a singer with a pianist, etc.  The image that came to me for an average "good" collaboration is a soft-serve ice cream twist.  You see the chocolate and the vanilla separately, you taste each, but that's that.

In a great collaboration, the vanilla isn't vanilla anymore and the chocolate isn't chocolate.  In a great collaboration, something absolutely new comes out of each artist because of the presence, energy and essence of the other artist.  It is not a hybrid, it is something distinctly "other".  Of course an artist has their style and technique, so it may not be that the artist does something that is unrecognizable, but the artist goes outside of their domain or does something different within their own domain because of the essence and presence of the other artist.  The artist is at least slightly changed by the presence of the other.  As the participating collaborative artist, your approach and contribution of "your part" is different than if you had created in the presence of another. When it is at its best, each artist's strengths are magnified and this births something more powerful than either artist working independently.   This is exciting.  This is the alchemy of collaboration and this is the kind of collaboration to perpetuate.  A new work is created and each artist has discovered something new about her/himself as well as his medium.  The work created also reflects this new territory and awareness.  While the experience and knowledge remains with each individual afterward,  the full manifestation of it requires the presence of both creators.

Much love and gratitude to all my collaborators throughout the years.  Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's great, but it is always worthwhile.

With Silence Instead

There's a certain staccato hiccup
Pickup
Stick-up
That happens
That makes one pause and wonder
Under
What circumstance would this all make sense
And adopt it

And adopt some children to make it all make
Sense-Lest
We have to continue our charade
To prove the worthiness of our non-breeding bodies
Taking up space and heat

We are useless and feel it in our aging gametes

We move fast to forget
We find other lost things to nurture:
3-legged cats, divorcees, widows and parts of ourselves and others
That have been abandoned

We fill in the blanks
But still live in the column on the side of the page

We are the last ones
Chosen
In confusion
After all
You might still guess right

Towels thrown in
We think we don't care anymore
Yet there's still a sting sometimes
A soft spot that still pulses
So tiny and fragile you must not touch it

Caress with your eyes
Let your tongue slide gently around the words
Hold it with silence instead.

And The Cat Replied ...

Where do we go from here?
She thought
As she lay on the bed
With her 3-legged cat

And the cat replied
Where we always go
Nowhere

Touché, my furry friend

Let's nap in front of the window
Warmed by the sun
Tickled by the wind
To dream the day away

Flip the Not to the Am

Lately I have been thinking more about how the way I live my life and what I teach and practice in improvisation relate to each other.  Sometime they mirror, sometimes they contradict, sometimes I am capable of something in one area and not the other.

Today I am pondering the topic of "breaking habits".  I immediately want to rename this as "expanding one's repertoire".  They sound very different and I believe they bring up a different energy, different associations, feelings, etc   I have much more success in this area in my artistic life than my other life.

Earlier in my dance life, sometimes the first thing I would do in this situation is to try to stop doing something.  "I'm not going to keep going down to the floor."    "I'm going to stop turning on my right side only".   But I quickly became aware that I was so busy focusing on what not to do that I was not very aware of what I was doing.   There is a certain loss of presence, flow and continuity when we concern ourselves with not doing something.  The essence is not clear or perhaps not even present because we are in the negative.   In my improv class I refer to this as "negative dancing" and it's quite obvious from the inside and out that something is missing and lost.

I could go on about what I teach next and the various things we can do instead of this "negative dancing", but this entry was not motivated by dance but by some recent experiences in my life when I found myself acting in a way in which I was attempting to "not do" something.   This was unsustainable and rather deadening to my spirit.  The energy of it was lost, the sense of play and creativity, of evolution and life.  So today as the improvisation of my day begins, I bear this in mind.  Follow the flow, the essence.  Expand the repertoire.  Engage in the experience.  Flip the Not to the Am.

Fuck the Patriarch

Fuck the Patriarch

The hand that fed you and
The hand that did not hold yours
Once you stopped being three feet tall

The awkward hand that knew nothing of
Gentleness or care

The broken-hearted hand that held a beer
And gave you a sip
A nasty bitter taste
That still sours your mouth

It's all about my da da
Daddy doo doo
Who fucked you over
And me too

Sloppy, scary cigarettes and secrets
Muttered curses and twisted faces
I steeled myself and did my daughterly duties
Took it and took it and took it
Til the day I broke and so did everything else

Christmas Day

In another nasty and senseless rage
Spitting and snarling in my face
I dared you to hit me
Right there in the middle of the living room
With the whole family to watch your anger win

The room went into a swirl
Bodies moving forward and back
Brothers stepping in
Sisters shuffling the little ones away
Smoothing and shuffling and smoothing.

Fall in line.
Shut your mouth and sit down at the table.
Shut your mouth and eat your dinner.
Shut your mouth and shut your mouth and shut your fucking mouth.

Time Moves With or Without Me

This entry is off the cuff... like the old days, written on the spot and un-edited.  Or so I say as I begin writing it.....

I always push forward.  Push for new, push for now.  Maybe "push" is not the right word because it doesn't take force.... but I do often value what is new and now more than what is old or of the past.

Today I am stopping for a moment and looking back because I am reminded of how rich our past is... how much of who we are is who we were.  I remember old art, old hair-dos, old loves, old passions.  There is so much there.  And looking back actually reflects a great deal about the present and not just in a shitty way.

It's an important moment for me:  to stop renouncing the past and driving forward as if my life depended on it.  Time moves with or without me.  I can look forward, back or just out my eyeballs.  It doesn't matter.  I am, regardless.   So, I soften and remember so many marvelous joys and pains, jokes and bullshit.  It has been rich and it still is.

Stand on Your Head/This is not The Not

Where is it?

Where's the song, where's the dance,
Where's the joke in this?

Where's the art, the poetry,
The hook-line-and sinker?

I turn it around and around,
Inside out
Upside down

And there's nothing
And in this nothingness is everything
That I fail to see
Because confusion and chaos is so blurry to me

Maybe if I spin faster I can match it
Spin my head so fast it will make sense
But what is the sense?
There's none to be had

Perhaps I could enjoy the fall if I wasn't looking for the bottom?

And if I let go of the bottom,
Then I am floating,
Ever suspended.

This is not the In-Between
This is not The Not
This Is

I run around the empty room,
Trying to escape the space
Faster and faster
But it surrounds me,
Corners me,
Envelopes me

All my talk is cheap and garbled.

My own words bounce off the walls,
Gently pelting my face
With the light sting of sleet
No sooner do they strike,
They melt

And what if I sat,
I know that I could
Still
In the midst

Let it rain down
Everything falling at once
I'd still be here
Falling too

Let it drip
Sink
Fall
Splash
Splatter

There's no bottom
No bottom
So you won't hit

Stand on your head
And fall the other way

The beginning
The end
It's all a mirage
And endless loop

Haven't you seen how it repeats?

The angle of the sun makes everything look different
But it's not

You're not falling
You're floating
Just stand on your head