I can't remember when I started using hot water as a coping mechanism. As coping mechanisms go, it isn't the cheapest one, maybe not even the most effective, but standing and sitting under a stream of hot water feels so good that when I am emotionally turbulent, especially panicking, I often make a bee-line for my shower and hunker in the hot water, breathing, crying, waiting until its so hot that my skin turns pink.
I am scared more often that I wish I was. I'm a post-graduate PhD candidate with solid performance and teaching resumes. My CV is pretty nifty, but I often feel like I am not enough. Like my performance cred is not enough. Like I am lazy and pathetic. I often feel that everything is too big and too hard and I curl up in my bed under the covers and sink into something like a mindless facebook stream or a dopamine sparking game app.
Today I am scared about the development of structure within the theater company that I have co-created and fostered. We've brought in skilled students who have experience with things like boards and budgets. They're creating bylaws for our little company. I can intellectually recognize the value and strength that having bylaws will create, especially as I and my partner move on from the company and give it over to new students who will eventually bequeath it to newer students and so on down through the years. The dream of space and time for students to take risks, make choices, and make their own theater will continue.
But my spidey senses tingle and swish and murmur. They release chemicals in my brain that speed my heart rate and cause the breath to whistle between my lips. My muscles clench and suddenly I'm into catastrophic thinking patterns. These bylaws will make it harder for students to art. The board will make decisions independently of the artists and force them towards product centered performances. If it's a business they'll have major incentive to only let the best students direct. If we vote people into the board it will be a popularity contest instead of who will actually want to do the job well. Boards are never an equal collective, the very structure and titles will cause in fighting, fear, and power plays.
Then somehow my reasoning kicks in and points to my own fear which is predicated on not knowledge, but lack of knowledge. Fear which is making me resist help. Fear which drives me away from asking questions and into my shower hunker.
I have questions. I think I have questions. I have fears that threaten to overwhelm me. I really wish there was some kind of positive way to wrap it all up like a little Dory image:
But even that, though it gives me a little smile, it doesn't quite feel real. Trust is something I want theater to be predicated on, especially the student theater. I want them to be able to trust each other and their artistic processes without fear of judgement or reprisal. I think that has to start with me too. So I'm trying to trust. I'm trying to keep swimming. I'm trying to step out bravely and continue to support and foster the creation of a structure that will let students come in and out and make things together.
Try to Trust. Say "Thank you, Fear, for showing me where I don't want to go. Now lets get busy going where I do want to go." Turning away from fear and swimming toward trust.
<Insert quick tie-it-together joke about hot water as a coping mechanism here.>
I am scared more often that I wish I was. I'm a post-graduate PhD candidate with solid performance and teaching resumes. My CV is pretty nifty, but I often feel like I am not enough. Like my performance cred is not enough. Like I am lazy and pathetic. I often feel that everything is too big and too hard and I curl up in my bed under the covers and sink into something like a mindless facebook stream or a dopamine sparking game app.
Today I am scared about the development of structure within the theater company that I have co-created and fostered. We've brought in skilled students who have experience with things like boards and budgets. They're creating bylaws for our little company. I can intellectually recognize the value and strength that having bylaws will create, especially as I and my partner move on from the company and give it over to new students who will eventually bequeath it to newer students and so on down through the years. The dream of space and time for students to take risks, make choices, and make their own theater will continue.
But my spidey senses tingle and swish and murmur. They release chemicals in my brain that speed my heart rate and cause the breath to whistle between my lips. My muscles clench and suddenly I'm into catastrophic thinking patterns. These bylaws will make it harder for students to art. The board will make decisions independently of the artists and force them towards product centered performances. If it's a business they'll have major incentive to only let the best students direct. If we vote people into the board it will be a popularity contest instead of who will actually want to do the job well. Boards are never an equal collective, the very structure and titles will cause in fighting, fear, and power plays.
Then somehow my reasoning kicks in and points to my own fear which is predicated on not knowledge, but lack of knowledge. Fear which is making me resist help. Fear which drives me away from asking questions and into my shower hunker.
I have questions. I think I have questions. I have fears that threaten to overwhelm me. I really wish there was some kind of positive way to wrap it all up like a little Dory image:
But even that, though it gives me a little smile, it doesn't quite feel real. Trust is something I want theater to be predicated on, especially the student theater. I want them to be able to trust each other and their artistic processes without fear of judgement or reprisal. I think that has to start with me too. So I'm trying to trust. I'm trying to keep swimming. I'm trying to step out bravely and continue to support and foster the creation of a structure that will let students come in and out and make things together.
Try to Trust. Say "Thank you, Fear, for showing me where I don't want to go. Now lets get busy going where I do want to go." Turning away from fear and swimming toward trust.
<Insert quick tie-it-together joke about hot water as a coping mechanism here.>
Trust without fear is not trust. But I think you are absolutely correct, like pain, fear is there as a coping/teaching mechanism. It points out what we find most troubling and is neither good nor bad, but incredibly useful in that light. Anything worth making requires trust and therefore a sense of risk. I think it is great that you are looking toward the future, but it is unknown, and is therefore an excellent place for fear to thrive. Fear can only exist in a place of ignorance. We are always ignorant about the future and are always anxious about it, much like death, and the intentions of others. But if we can learn to trust one another maybe we can make a better, braver community and theatre. I hope that is so.
ReplyDeleteMe too.
ReplyDeleteIgnorance and fear are certainly linked. You reminded me of the Actor and the Target. Specifically the locations of fear the future and the past as harbors for fear to lurk in. Specifically because one is always a memory and the other is always an imagined time. Neither one is something we experience or can act in, but both are fertile grounds for negative feelings.
Trust and bravery will be my "just keep swimming" motto I guess.