Why I Make Art, Part II

Written 2 July 2021, 12.26am.

This past month, I took Andrew Nemr's online course, 'The Encounter,' and while some of it went over my head (as I suspected it might; this was a course marketed to professional dancers and I'm at best an intermediate-level tap dancer), the last two lessons opened up a window into my own soul that I never knew existed.

He talked about establishing trust with the audience -- how one must start with the common knowledge that the audience has (in terms of music, rhythm, body language... anything) and said that from here, you lead them across the bridge to the meaning that you want to convey. He went on to explain that you know you've succeeded if the comments you get afterwards are less along the lines of 'wow, I could never do that,' 'how many years have you been dancing?' 'I used to dance when I was younger,' and more along the lines of 'what were you thinking about while you were dancing that? it was so intense.' He gave several examples of the former and I related to every single one of them -- so intimately that I heard them in the voices of the people closest to me as he spoke them. Those are the exact phrases that annoy me so, so much and make me angry that they're clearly just trying to make conversation and weren't impressed at all with me or my work. They're just stock phrases, and if there is one thing on this planet that I hate (besides Hillsong music), it's stock sympathy/caring phrases. It would be almost better if they would just come out and say they hated my performance.

And in a flash, I understood what I had really been after.

It wasn't love -- as I thought it had been in Part I -- or at least not exclusively. It was understanding.

That's what I've been chasing after all these years. All I wanted was to be understood. Not just brushed aside or given a flippant 'yeah, I hear ya' -- understood.

That's what I've been missing this whole time.

That's why I always feel so unfulfilled whenever I leave the theatre after a show with the stock phrases of my friends and family ringing in my ears. This is why I've been suicidal for most of my life. This is why, when Brittney and my cousin died, I repeated the story and rehashed how I was feeling over and over and over, probably literally millions of times, like a stuck record, for YEARS until I was mentally abused into silence and a deeper self-hatred for 'not getting over it' immediately. This is why I wasted my entire life bending over backwards, allowing myself to be manipulated by directors and churches in hopes that if I could just be subservient enough then they would love me and I would finally have what I wanted... except I wouldn't have.

I had love, at least in an imperfect and patchy way. I look back on my life and I can see moments where my parents and maybe even a couple of friends really did care about me. But I cannot think of even one single moment where I felt understood. Not by my parents. Not by my friends. Not by my husband. Not. Anybody.

This would have been a crushing blow -- maybe nobody will ever understand me -- except that Nemr had already paved the way by saying that you start with the common knowledge that everybody has before you lead them across the bridge to what you actually want to say. It's the exact opposite of what I usually do -- I usually just jump right into the deep end because I honestly prefer other people to do that as well. I hate small talk and pre-amble (big words for somebody who's spent a full eleven years posting rambly drivel on this very blog). But Nemr not only showed me what was wrong, he gave me a solution to try. It may be very much against my entire personality, but clearly the personality I have wasn't working anyway. I can handle being something I'm not if it's only temporary. If I have to fake something for ten minutes onstage before becoming my true self in order to make people understand, that's something I'm willing to try. At least there's hope of being understood. That's something that I've never had before.

(TW: suicide.)

I always had this daydream that if I killed myself, those who truly loved me would sift through every one of my documents and papers -- a huge undertaking to say the least -- and finally, finally know and understand me and what I needed. That daydream has actually fueled some suicidal episodes -- being understood only after death was better than never being understood at all. Hastening my death would hasten understanding. I was literally willing to kill for it.

I kept saying I don't feel love; I must be broken because I literally can't feel it. Maybe that's at least partly true. Maybe it's not true at all. Maybe I just mistook love for understanding and it was almost a fatal misunderstanding. Maybe there is a way out and maybe I can learn it. I don't really know where to start, but at least there is an option.

Thank you, Andrew Nemr. Maybe this isn't what you intended for your course to do, but I'm glad this is what it did.

Sources: Nemr, Andrew. 'Lesson 16 - Communicating Meaning.' In The Encounter (online video course). 2021. https://andrewnemr.teachable.com/p/the-encounter

Why I Make Art

Originally written 9 June 2021, 11.40am.

(Part I)

This is a sobering post to write, but I think in the back of my mind, I've known this for a while.

I'm realising with greater clarity that the reason I dance is for attention.

   

There. I said it.

And I've been doing it for attention for so long that I don't know anything else. I told myself I want to make people feel, but I could never clarify what exactly I wanted them to feel.

This also explains why, whenever my future in dance is threatened, I react SO strongly. I have literally attempted suicide after rough practice days, just because all I could see was my 'dream,' the thing I had built my life upon, slipping away from me.

As a child in a German Baptist community, dance was certainly a way to get attention... literally nobody else was doing it. And I guess that early attention stuck with me. I've been chasing that high ever since. As someone whose love language is words of affirmation, dance was the only way I found that could get me the words of affirmation I so desperately craved. I certainly wasn't getting it at home. The only time I got complimented was if someone saw me dance and happened to make an offhand comment in earshot -- which was not often.

These breadcrumbs fueled my love-starved spirit, and I threw myself deeper and deeper into dance, trying to top myself every single day in spectacular ways. Posting dance videos to Instagram only kicked open Pandora's box for good -- now whenever my family couldn't be bothered to toss a crumb of kindness my way, I always had the hope of a stranger on the internet happening by and filling in the gap. Of course, this isn't consistent either, but like a rat in a lab who knows that pushing a button might dispense food, I began going at it as if with a jackhammer. Even the tiniest hope of a compliment or recognition was enough to keep the wheel turning.

I've spent over twenty years of my life wholeheartedly devoting myself to this pursuit, this way of life...all just to get attention. Maybe even a spot of love. I built my entire identity around dance because that was the only thing people even noticed about me. I have sunk hundreds of thousands of my parents' dollars and my own into training and development for a passion that I don't know if I actually loved for itself in the first place. I spent over twenty years as the bad guy in a 'friends with benefits' relationship with the thing I swore I was created for and called to.

And now I don't know what to do. This is my entire identity. Every single decision I have ever made in my life has served dance in some way or another. A life built around dance is quite literally all I have ever known. And it's entirely on me. My parents weren't the kind to push us kids into their own secret dreams whether we liked them or not. I chose dance out of my own free will and allowed it to become my entire life. All because I wanted to be seen. Noticed. Loved. And even after nearly thirty years of life, I have found no other way to get the love and/or attention that I crave.

COVID Losses Of The Future

The worst thing about this pandemic is knowing that when it's all over and when we can go visit each other again, there will be less people who will want to spend time with me.

I've taken a fairly hardline 'pro-mask' stance. I'm quite private on most all of my 'political' leanings, but I have watched too many young people die of lung failure to be quiet about this one. Wear. A. Mask. It's not that hard, and no, it will not kill you.

Of course, this apparently does not sit well with what's left of my extended family. I've had several relatives unfriend me already, and no doubt the rest won't be speaking to me after this. My husband and I were planning to have a reception next year and inviting all those who we had wanted to invite to our wedding before COVID regulations destroyed our guest list. But now, looking at the list, I wonder if any of them will even come. I would still love to invite them, but there's also the knowledge that they would rather put their conspiracy-theory-worship above their love for their immunocompromised friends and family (read: me). And there's also the knowledge that I've clashed with some of them on social media and the way people are these days, they probably won't want anything to do with me.

I've lost over half of my extended family already to death, divorce, and petty disputes. I'm so used to loss by now that you'd think I wouldn't feel anything, but I would very much be lying if I said it didn't still hurt to be excommunicated by the people who once said they would do anything for me.

COVID will fade, but I know from experience that the pain of loss never does.

An Ode To OG Girlpop

Yesterday my husband and I got talking about the first-ever cassettes we bought, and it unlocked a memory that I hadn't even thought to recall in probably ten years.

I was seven years old and it was ZOEgirl's self-titled album. I was such a music nerd even then that I remember my sister purchasing Raze's Power on the same day (she always had cooler taste than me at that age -- I definitely listen to Raze far more than ZOEgirl today). Young as I was, I already owned several cassettes -- mixtapes that my dad and I had collaborated on in front of his big stereo system that occupied a more central place in our living room than the television. To own my own real, honest-to-goodness cassette album was a special thing indeed. I remember sitting in the parking lot of the hardware store (my parents had wisely taken us to buy music first and then gone to spend 45 minutes at the hardware store after we had a distraction in our hands -- and yes, music was a sufficient distraction for both my sister and me), and reading the liner notes -- all the lyrics, the credits, everything. I read the copyright year on the spine, the way my dad had showed me on his own albums at home. I was only just beginning to understand the concept of years (as in, we are currently living in the year 2021), but I knew the year 2000 meant it was a new album (I did not yet know that this would be one of maybe a dozen albums that I would actually buy new over the course of my life -- the overwhelming majority of the music I've bought since then has had copyright years beginning with the number '19').

Naturally, I played that ZOEgirl album a lot. When I ventured into that dusty section of my iTunes this morning following my husband's question, I found that not one word escaped my memory despite the 'last played' date being May 2017 (exactly four years and one day earlier, in fact).

Was ZOEgirl great? No. If you don't have memories attached to them, they're probably pretty forgettable. But to us Christian girls of the early 2000s, they expressed the faith we were being raised in in a way we could relate to (and, most importantly for some of us, dance to). Even listening to them today was a breath of fresh air in the current collective spritual climate of doubt, anger, and cynicism. The songs, especially on this debut album, describe life as a Christian with a simplicity and joy that I have not seen or felt in Christiandom in a very long time. Every song points to Christ alone -- not works, not 'goodness,' not pedigree, not strength. Every. Song. And every song speaks of God with joy, adoration, and complete trust. There were mainstream CCM bands at the time with far worse theology than this flash-in-the-pan girl-pop band aimed at teenyboppers (back when 'teenybopper' was a serious designation for a specific subculture). Perhaps I should have been less surprised to see singer/songwriter Alisa Childers on the front lines of contemporary Biblically-sound theology twenty years after the release of this album.

Is the music dated? Definitely. In terms of production and instrumentation, this fits in squarely with acts like Aqua or Jump5. Is this a bad thing? Not to me. It takes me right back to the simplicity and joy of my childhood before my mom's depression got bad -- back in the very early days when she was able to be properly present with us. The light, sparkling music also accentuates the purity of the message ZOEgirl was presenting. It's also still very definitely danceable (which, along with 'do the lyrics assume I actually own a brain?' is my personal litmus test).

ZOEgirl is a product of their time, for certain, but it's hard to find an act so pure, even in that era. For that, they deserve a second look. They're still not even in my top 100 favourite artists of all time (although they might have a chance at number 100 if Terry Scott Taylor didn't have so many bands loading up the top of the list). But they will remain firmly entrenched in my memory and in my iPod for what they were able to give a mature-for-her-age girly-girl music-nerd seven-year-old.

Lost The Plot

Today would have been M's 25th birthday.

I've talked at length about how my writing and choreographic output just simply dried up after her death and I'm not sure either will ever come back.

I lost myself after she and Brittney died. I was such a highly creative person then, and without them to spur me on, I have zero motivation for anything. I made a half-hearted 'goals for 2021' list back in late January, and I have accomplished exactly none of them. In past years I would post huge goals on this very blog, and while I never accomplished all of them, I always managed a good chunk of them. But today I looked at that 2021 list and I realised I have no real reason to do any of that. I know the process of choreographing all those dances used to bring me joy, but now it feels pointless. Why create it? No-one will see it, no-one will like it, no-one will even care that it exists. Without M and Brittney to make the process exciting and crazy, even the journey isn't fun anymore. Maybe that was why I loved it back then -- the journey used to be fun and exciting, and it's not fun to do creative things alone and unsupported.

I feel adrift, numb, and so, so weary. I feel like there's nothing left for me to do, although the very fact that I'm still alive despite three (serious) attempts to not be should be proof alone that there is in fact something left for me to do. But right now I can't think what the world might need that somebody else couldn't do much better.

M was a breath of fresh air, bright, exuberant, energetic, passionate. Even on her bad days her drive and determination were inspiring, and she created so many opportunities for herself and for others. She was singlehandedly responsible for a lot of performances of my early choreography. I always wished I could be as driven and determined and successful as she was. And now I'm just too worn out from life to even try anymore. I want to follow her to where she is, where expectations don't strangle people, where souls don't silently die while their shells shuffle on. Why bother with anything here?

But if I'm meant to still do something, them what? And why? I don't know if I even have the energy to find the answer.

Happy birthday, M. I miss you so much.

Enough

I'm just so tired of not being enough for anyone.
I'm not quick enough, smart enough, flexible enough, spending enough, saving enough, talking enough, thinking enough, smiling enough, cheerful enough, nice enough, considerate enough, tall enough, friendly enough, and the general consensus is I'm sure as heck not trying hard enough to be any of these things.

Listen to me. I developed an eating disorder at age 25 because I was spending every last single second of my existence in the dance studio trying desperately to prove once and for all, that I actually WAS trying hard enough. I had no time to eat because every SECOND that I didn't spend in the studio practicing was proof that I was nothing but a third-string deadbeat delusional failure and a total waste of skin. I was being told every. single. day that I wasn't trying hard enough and how DARE I call myself a performer. I literally almost killed myself trying to prove that I actually WAS trying.

And honestly, I'm still there. In every single aspect of my life, not just dance.

I'm still bleeding myself dry, hoping against hope that maybe the next gallon will be enough. Or the next. Or the next. And I am stubborn enough to literally bleed myself dry if that will convince someone, anyone that I'M ACTUALLY F*CKING TRYING.

I'm so tired. I'm so, so tired.

100

Today I officially finished my 100th piece of choreography.

I actually thought this would happen much sooner. The early years of choreography were so prolific -- right up until college, I would literally choreograph for hours at a time, every single day. I think after the first year, I was up to 60-some completed projects. This obviously slowed down when college got into the mix, but I never truly stopped.

Until M died.

After that, I hit a wall, both in writing and in dance. M was my creative partner for both, and without her, life felt completely void of -- well, life. She died in September 2018, and in the next two years I choreographed maybe five pieces. All of them were like pulling teeth. She had been my only real source of choreographic inspiration and encouragement, and without that, there was no reason to push myself to keep creating these hack jobs, these robotic simulations of feeling that really meant nothing. All my work felt boring and repetitive.

I keep track of my completed choreography by putting the songs in an iTunes playlist and by entering the titles into a Pages document, along with the dates of completion. When I added that song to the playlist today and saw the little words '100 songs' at the bottom of the iTunes window, I felt immediately driven to message M and tell her about my milestone, like I did with most all my choreography/writing-related accomplishments.

But I couldn't. And there was no-one else still alive who would get how truly, fantastically exciting this was. M would have freaked out -- enthusiastic run-on sentences in all caps, loudly proclaiming my achievement, even though her output far outpaced mine. I never realised how much her zany excitement motivated me until it wasn't there anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I am proud of myself. It took nine years to get here, and for this chronic procrastinator to actually finish 100 pieces is a huge milestone. (Plus there's the saying that you have to do a thing a hundred times to be good at it... so I guess I've leveled up now?) I started seriously choreographing in earnest in an attempt to prove my mother wrong when she said I didn't want it enough. A hundred pieces -- some 1,100 hand-notated pages -- later, I'd like to think I've made my point. But my excitement is tempered by not being able to share it with the one person in my life who really cared about me choreographing stuff.

Here's to the next 100 pieces. Hopefully there's less loss to dance about.

The Long Lonely Crisis

Originally written early 2018.

This is something that's been on my mind for a while now.

(Trigger warning -- suicide.)

Most of you probably know that I attempted suicide in March 2017. A month later I finally had the opportunity to ask for help and subsequently began counselling. I 'stabilised' -- in theory. But you know when the suicidal thoughts were at their absolute worst? Do you know when I was the closest to ending my life?

It was eight months later -- November 2017.

I was still in counselling once a week. I was still attending all my classes. I continued my rigorous practice schedule. But in late October there had been a serious incident involving a close friend of mine and that was all it took to break me. The fragile progress I'd made vapourised in the aftermath of one horrible text. I doubled the frequency of my counselling appointments in the wake of what had happened but I would still go back to the house for lunch every day and sit there in the living room, staring out the window, visibly shaking, rage coursing through every capillary in my body, literally not even sure if I would survive the next twenty minutes or if I would snap and end it before then.

When I attempted suicide in March 2017, that was actually a more spur-of-the-moment thing. Certainly the anger and frustration that triggered it had been building for some time, but I didn't sit there and plan it that day. I didn't even really realise that I was about to attempt suicide until my feet were already moving. But in November, I was literally planning it out in my head... the details of what I would do, how I would do it, and -- most importantly -- the reactions of others ('maybe then someone would finally be sad for me'). You're not supposed to give those thoughts space and I knew that, but I was too completely, utterly exhausted/spent/depleted/frustrated/beat down to steer them in another direction. All I had the energy to do was just sit and let them run their course, winding my nerves tighter and tighter, increasing my internal tension to the breaking point.

From my counselling, I knew that I should say something. Text someone. Go to a friend's house. Call 911 if necessary (I knew I would not survive the drive to the hospital if I tried to drive myself). That May, when I had started telling people close to me about my attempt in March, they had all said things like, 'you can talk to me if you need it.' They spent time with me, checked in on me, told me I needed to live -- for a while.

But when I hit bottom in November 2017, I never called anybody. I didn't send any texts. You know why?

Because the phrase 'I'm here for you' has an expiration date. Always. I'd learned that after my cousin's death in 2015, and I knew I'd passed that date. Quite a few of those people who had been so concerned in the weeks following my March attempt had already, by November of that same year, told me I was wallowing too much (as if one can 'wallow' in a medical condition that's outside of their control!). I knew if I tried to contact anybody -- including those that helped me the first time around -- they would just assume I was looking for attention or perhaps overreacting. 'You've been in counselling. You know people care about you. That was months ago -- why are you still not better yet? Why aren't you trying hard enough?'

I knew my condition was serious, but I had no way of convincing anybody else that it was. I'd been in treatment for seven months. I was supposed to be better, right? And if I wasn't better yet, then obviously it was all my fault. I wasn't trying hard enough. And nobody wants anybody to do with somebody who's 'lazy' and 'doesn't try...' (Perhaps it is better for that person to be dead...?) (Don't tell me you're not thinking this sometimes when I'm struggling and seem exceptionally needy.)

Listen to me, just for a moment. Recovery is not linear. Recovery is not instant. Let me say this again -- recovery is not instant.

Please get this.

There is no quick fix for depression. Yes, there is counselling, and yes, there is medication, but neither of these are quick fixes, and neither of these is guaranteed. At this moment in history, depression is incurable. If you don't understand this, you cannot say you understand depression. You cannot understand the weight of knowing there is no end to the fight, ever, for the rest of your life. Recovery -- especially from a suicide attempt -- can take years. Literal, calendar years. And if you say you're going to be there for us through that time of picking up the pieces, you need to realise how long that really is. It's long. And it's hard. And it's slow. And it's lonely. And it feels pointless. And because we're already depleted from actually getting to the cliff edge of our lives and clawing our way back up over the edge of our own demise, we don't have a lot of strength left. It's like how you're depleted and listless after a flu -- it takes time to get your strength back. In the very earliest days of my 'recovery' (April 2017), I had zero will to live -- I was in fact still actively planning to die. It took a lot of people pouring their determination into me for a long time (we're talking every single day for months) before I began to even reflect any of it myself (it took even longer than that for any of that determination to truly get inside me). I have said of one friend who was there at that time that she fought harder for my life than I did. I had well and truly given up the ghost, but it was people like her who doggedly insisted that I needed to live and stayed close to me to ensure that I did.

But the thing is, over time, they begin to drift away. They think you're better and they begin to drift away and assume you're in remission. But just because the initial emergency has passed doesn't mean that you're cured. You're now at 20% battery instead of 1%, which is of course an improvement, but that 20% can -- and does -- get depleted quickly. Meanwhile everyone assumes that you're now permanently at 100% and gets upset with you if you so much as hint that you aren't.

A crisis is not solved (though, yes, it can sometimes be temporarily alleviated) with a ten-minute text friend-therapy session. A mental health crisis can last -- even with treatment -- for years. The suicidal thoughts that nearly killed me in 2017 actually started in early 2015. I was in full-blown crisis for two years -- BEFORE I even made an attempt. And don't make the mistake of thinking it the crisis ends immediately after one attempt (even with treatment).

Even now, there are still more dark days than I let on. There are fewer now than there were in November 2017, yes, but there are still days where I am frustrated and lonely and feeling like nothing I ever do will be worth any of the time I'm putting into it and I start thinking, 'why even bother?' Because of my personal history with this cocktail of depression/perfectionism/suicidal ideation, this little phrase alone opens the floodgates to dark things very quickly -- as soon as that question comes up, I can go from neutral to suicidal in literal seconds. It's such a fast slide that I often don't even realise it's happening until I'm already planning what my imminent death will look like. Basically, because I've been to the edge of suicide before, it means I can wind up back in that state easier and faster than others who have never attempted. It's become a sort of muscle memory.

But I consistently don't contact anyone because I know that nobody is going to take me seriously -- they're just going to roll their eyes and ask why I'm not trying harder. I've gone through a lot this past year, but I kept pretending I was fine. At the moment that's doable. But if I start sliding again, that means I'm not going to contact anybody.

This is why checking in is SO imperative, even if somebody looks fine. If we don't feel safe to say we're struggling, a lot of times we simply won't. And that's dangerous... it means we won't warn you, we'll just fire the fatal shot and hope someone cares enough to bury the body.

Lightning In A Bottle

Lately my choreographic motivation has begun to awaken from its long slumber (of course it's when I don't have access to a studio to work stuff out in, but I'm not going to complain too much -- I'll take the ideas, please). To give it something to do, I've been notating the ballets that I sketched out but never notated, going back to 2017. (Don't worry, it's only like five pieces... I haven't choreographed much ballet since I started college.)

This included my solo for Terry Scott Taylor's heart-wrenching One More Time, choregraphed in two days in the immediate aftermath of M's death. I found my notes for the piece, but the ending seemed incomplete. I knew I had finished choreographing it, as I remembered performing it live on Instagram (to resounding silence, as nearly everybody at college either didn't give one crap about dance or didn't think I was talented enough to bother doing it) and filming the performance on my video camera at the same time. So tonight, I dug out that memory card and found the video.

And I was stunned.

It was filmed 2 October 2018, and I found two rehearsal takes from the day before. In 2018, I was starting my fourth year of college, having been told by my program director at the beginning of the school year that I had exactly one (1) chance to 'prove myself' (whatever that meant, and no, he did not deign to tell me) or he would be, and I quote, "done with you." I would routinely beat myself up -- mentally and physically -- in the studio and at home because I was so deeply, profoundly angry at myself for continually failing to measure up to his expectations -- whatever the hell they even were. I had yet to decode them after four years, but I felt no end stupid for not having done so, despite the fact that he was the one not communicating clearly. My self-confidence waned steadily throughout my time at college, as a direct result of the way he and the instructors under him treated me. Because of how much they hated me and my work, I began to hate the way I danced, and by extension, I hated myself. In a way, I was jealous of M for escaping this terrible world and all the pressure of perfection before I did. Now I had -- and still have -- to face all that belittling and pressure alone. After I performed/filmed this solo, I never watched it, knowing I would just hate myself more for not being a good enough dancer to justify doing that dance.

Today when I watched it, I saw this young woman with a grace and tenderness that I could only dream of even now. There's an absolutely luscious back bend in there -- I thought if I lived to be a hundred I could never be flexible enough to do something so beautiful. Even in the rehearsal videos she looked like a professional dancer. The courus were perfect. Her arms just floated, absolutely effortlessly. The lines were perfect -- I made a goal at the beginning of this year to work on my lines, but after seeing this video, I'm wondering if I really ever needed to work on them at all. There was a section in the 'performance' that did feel a bit more staccato than it was in rehearsal, but the pure artistry overshadowed that. I think it may have been the most beautiful ballet I have ever watched.

Did I just capture lightning in a bottle? Was it all just a fluke? Or was I really that good all along and nobody was decent enough to actually tell me? I choreographed, learned, and performed this piece in literally two days. This was before I learned an entire staging of Oklahoma! and the second acts of Jesus Christ Superstar and Chicago in essentially a week (side note, do all theatre companies literally spend five months on Act I and then stage/choreograph ALL of Act II in one three-hour rehearsal or is this just the companies I end up working with?).

I'm still deciding what to do with this footage. It is incredible -- to my eyes, anyway. But it's also rehearsal footage, and I don't like posting full rehearsals of pieces I do want to make into an official video someday -- spoilers, you know. I would love to film this properly, but I don't have access to any studio or even a space large enough to do it. So do I just sit on this footage and wait, possibly several more years, before I can properly film it? Then comes the question 'what if it's not as good?' I'm not getting any younger (or more flexible)...

Either way, it encouraged me so much. At least I can watch and enjoy this video. It touched my heart, it truly did. If I do decide to post it somewhere, I'll link it here.

Day 23: National Choreography Month

Finished the Queen song and now I'm getting back to my choreographic roots with a large-group White Heart number -- specifically Heaven Of My Heart (1993).

I think this one comes out of some of the emotional background of Who Wants To Live Forever -- that weight of nostalgia, that longing for another world. I'm still so tired of being here. I'm not suicidal, most of the time, just weary... this breathtaking, soul-scarring, heartbreaking, physically heavy weariness, this bone-crushing, mind-melting nostalgia for something I can hardly remember or perhaps never experienced. I feel like I don't belong here, and I want to go somewhere where I do... home -- wherever that even is anymore.

Locked in a sky so blue

Is a land made for me and you

And we're going there, but until the dream comes true

There's a secret place

So full of love and grace

When the world spins and breaks apart

I'm going to the other heaven of my heart...

I've been realising lately that the theme of a lot of my work (not just choreography) is the theme of escape. Not extreme, altered-reality escape -- not detaching oneself from one's emotions; more like escaping into a better reality. I spent so much time in my head because that was where my better worlds were -- the worlds in my head that I unlocked and sculpted with my fingers on the keyboard and my feet on a creaking wood floor. Maybe this song best describes what I've been doing with my artistic output all along. The themes were about escaping because that's what I have always wanted, more than anything -- to be able to reach the goodness that exists only just beyond the curtain of the physical, time-bound world. I can feel it, I sometimes see glimpses of it, but it can't come here, and, until my time comes, I can't go there either. I guess this is why songs like Terry Scott Taylor's Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (among others) resonate with me SO strongly -- at least there is one other person on the planet who sees it too. It's not just me.

And escape is not just the theme of my work, it's often the reason I create. I can go forward to heaven, or back to times I had with people who I will never see again until I can move forward to heaven -- and in the past few years, creating art has often done both at the same time. Choreographing this song specifically takes me back to the time when I still had viable dreams of choreographing and performing, and the friendship of people like M and Brittney. If I could lock myself in any year forever, it would be 2012. There was so much potential and hope in my life then. Now I'm just old and washed up. Doing this piece has really made me realise just how critical M's very existence was to my creative process. There's a duet section in this piece, and I still see her beside me in my mind's eye, doing the beats and turns as I write them down -- her endless energy and bright dramatic eyes. She wanted to escape too, and she was lucky enough to get it. I would be lying if I said I wasn't jealous. I've already choreographed a piece in her memory, but I think this one is in her memory too. No doubt everything I choreograph from now on will be.

I'm about a third of the way through the song now. It's a light, airy allegro piece, very ethereal, lots of arms and heads and a few floating turns... a lot like the music itself, energetic yet dream-like. I am LOVING choreographing the duet part (I still have a little bit of it to go), especially making them intertwine with each other and with White Heart's glorious harmonies. I can't put into words how much I wish M could dance this with me for real. I wish the curtain of time didn't seperate us.

There I go, trying to escape again.