DEALING WITH DOUBT.
Cove Park, Day 3
What a dreadful night’s sleep!
My subconscious kept me up most of the night bombarding me with new ideas and full throttle replays of recent conversations. Some made perfect sense but in my dreamlike state a lot of my rapid brain talk felt like a mash-up of Tim Burton and Salvador Dali rather than the mental ease I needed. And being wide awake from 3.40 am is not my ideal kickstart to the day.
Unhealthy insecurities are rife. My notebook is packed full with worry and indecision this morning. Am I on track? Do I have what I need to move forward? Am I using Charlie’s time and skillset wisely? Am I any good? Yes, really, am I any good? That last one is such a biggie! I’m sure most artists must ponder on that major doubt sometimes. As I age it seems to be less of a healthy enquiry and more of a stumbling block. When Charlie complimented my physical movement, it was like being unexpectedly dunked in an ice-cold bucket. I couldn’t hear his praise because my internal jury was working against me.
So we took a pause. We sat. We talked. I had time to let unnecessary expectations fall away. Valuable headspace to refocus and remind me, with Charlie’s help, what this week was all about. Yes, it was only an hour of time out, but oh how valuable it was. I realised that we were both distracted by the allure of making a product/piece and had forgotten all this is supposed to be about my creative processes. I was concerned that I still couldn’t see what the development of my practice looked like.
We had hit it off so well that we are now totally in the zone to make a new dance piece. It’s looking to be an amazing piece and we are entirely consumed by our excitement for its creation. It’s thrilling. Addictive even. But that's not the point of this week and it's taken us completely off track. My objective is to explore the processes that surround the making of work, not to actually make a piece of work. I find it really interesting, and telling, that I need to be in the meat of it, physically and mentally, to then feel able to zoom back out and see the mechanics of the process for what it is. In essence, it has to be a lived experience.
We screeched to a halt. It feels incredibly brave to stop a process that was fundamentally working so well but I just knew that something was not right. At the end of this week, we could have a great dance piece to show you but my practice still won’t have enough fuel to sustain me into the future. In fact, my gut is telling me I’ll be back at square one. And listening to the quieter voices, wiser voices in my head, I think we caught ourselves just in time. As Charlie put it, today was a ‘palette cleanse’.