Play and Presence

Tools for the terrain between who I am and who I'm becoming.

Wisdom isn’t about accruing more information.
Creativity isn’t about DOING “more”
Efforting “more” does not always provide ease.
Controlling “all of the things” does not always ensure an outcome.
Trying “harder” does not make me more interesting.

Chip, chip, chip, chip goes my chisle…

“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”

― Michelangelo

I love the story around Michelangelo sitting in front of that slab of marble. For many reasons, but first as a reminder that, as opposed to having a perfect plan and executing his artistry to make it so, he simply removed the material that was standing in the way of the revelation he believed was beneath the surface.
I am reminded of Steven Nachmanovitch’s book “Free Play”. He writes, “To do anything artistically you have to acquire technique, but you create through your technique and not with it.”
How beautiful to not rest upon technique and skill…
Permit myself to let go and trust in my ability to flow through me if I take a moment to recognize the potential that lies beneath this moment?
What if I stop collecting “expertise” as an insurance policy to be thrust into greatness?
Maybe to have the chance of genius to flow through me and meet the moment that is meeting me.

This is where play can be so helpful.
In the letting go of control, of technique, for the sake of inspiration.

What feels like forever ago, I was cast as Inga in Mel Brook’s “Young Frankenstein”, and I was very excited, but also so very nervous for the yodeling in the music.
Leading up to rehearsals, I toiled with the sheet music for hours trying to hammer in all the little flutters of notes in her songs and despite all my efforts, my attempts were not sounding like a yodel AT ALL. Getting pretty frustrated, the thought slipped in:
“this should be fun”.

I put down my music book, I listened to some songs with incredible yodelers just to steep in the sound. After a while, I got back up, without the book. Armed only with the trust that I knew the notes, I knew the words… and I just PLAYED at yodeling. I let go of what I thought it needed to sound or look like, of all the technique and training, and just let my instrument (my body) find its way through by being ridiculous.

I got so big, big, big in my interpretation that I’m sure my neighbors could hear the insanity, because you can’t yodel without a lot of breath, which for me brought a lot of sound. And then there was a moment in my galumphing around where I felt that flip from one octave to the other in my soft palette. I FOUND IT!

The monolith of the task at hand had its first chip.
I carved through my fear of looking incompetent or sounding like a fool, with nothing but absurdity and silliness.
I responded to the loud intrusive thoughts of “You can’t do this”,
with “Oh yeah? Well, what about THIS…. I’m going to ‘not be able to do this’ so hard and so loud just to show you(me) that you’re right (intrusive thought) .”
And in that defiance, I got a little glimmer of what yodeling felt like in my body, enough to allow me to keep picking up my tool kit and not abandon this “piece of marble”.
It wasn’t Michelangelo’s David…. but it was a masterpiece for me in that moment.

I have spent decades being me (gratitude).
My personality, my essence, my being… shaped by history, environment,
the people around me,
like an artist’s chisel against the stone.
A work I will never get to see completed….
But if aware enough, I will get to participate in,
not just through challenge or work, but through delight and pleasure.

Here is to meeting my life with intention,
continuing to whisper to an artist I cannot see.
”make it wonderous,”