Been thinking about the creative process.

Friend said, "I took the pressure off nailing it the first time and realized I can just vomit stuff out and iterate!"

I said: "Ah yes, the creative process has been rediscovered for the billionth time."

My acting teacher often says, in process, you find freedom of emotion before anything else. Before identifying what your character wants, before you pay attention to breathing, before blocking, imagining the circumstances, finding images. First you must be able to weep & laugh.

In writing, if I go in with a preconceived idea, I can't write anything but a garbage journal entry or a stilted scene. If I go in preparing to be terrified by my subconscious-- pure gold. Okay not always pure gold but I'm not embarrassed by it.

In dancing, I've lately begun cutting open the milliseconds. That is, I don't complete an action I start. I don't even stay on the script of an arm moving around my body if halfway through, the impulse is lost or transforms.

What does that result in?
Constant surprise.
What does that result in?
Lots of feelings/thoughts like,

"oh my god, was this inside me all along?
Who is dancing right now?
Who is dancing through me right now?"

Or, with writing:
"To whom are these words coming?
How is it I know what to say, and when to change what is coming out?"

Onstage, even moreso.
"Who is this woman living out her needs and passions and thoughts and discomforts through my body??"

There are secrets of ourselves and the universe in our impulses split second by split second, and they form a majestic whole if we can only let them run the show for awhile.

Not to mention there's a lot of blah blah on this. Artists being vessels. Spiritual leaders channeling the divine. Endless religious & psychological discussion on the inner self, the wise self, the whole self, the cosmic self?

(Is it she who Acts when I get out of the way? I can't even think thoughts about her without getting back in the way. Funny, my impulse here for capital letters. The mystic in me getting the better of modern woman).

Creativity is a moment-by-moment, beat-by-beat, excruciatingly present and responsive process. It is non-doing, sure. It is daring to let your leg whip out and move in a way you could never have consciously intended and have never seen anyone do before. It is non-imitation.

Finding this strange and delicate track is what I imagine James Carse refers to as the Genius of your Self. What IFS means when it talks about the Self. What artist mean when they talk about the Muses. What religions mean when they talk about, well, G-d.

You don't make it happen. It takes you. All you offer is the Grace to allow yourself to be changed, the Humility to Trust the force that is moving you, the Surrender to honor it even when it takes you somewhere bizarre--

(A strange physical shape you're not sure you're way out of? A perverse or delicately sensitive short story, of content or form unacknowledged or disrespected in your society? A set of character behaviors which cross far past how you would EVER let yourself act in real life).

This track can be shared in sensuality or sexuality with someone else, though I suspect it is even more delicate there. It's hard enough to have the luck and daring to wind up in that space alone.

So, how do we MAKE this happen?

Please tell me you see the irony. ;)

I guess we just need to have a sense of humor, show up at the typewriter day after day, increase the likelihood of our grace emerging....

gee, did I just reinvent the creative process for the billionth time?

Lucky me. I guess I'm part of the universe, and it just...._works a certain way._

Weird.

(Did I just rediscover Truth? ;) )

(We often mix up discovery and encounter, by the way)

(I'm done now)