on discipline

i return to the work force in just under an hour. i'm ambivalent. i worry that returning to the workforce, a relatively steady income, and that crazy place called the university of texas will undo me, will somehow take away all the progress, soul-searching, and craft-building i have done both in this past summer and over the last two years.

despite this ambivalence, i know i can actually continue, maybe even accelerate my work. the key is discipline.

discipline has been on the mind a lot. sometimes, i'll find myself saying, "when i start earning this much," or "when i get this resource." but this is just an excuse to put off discipline. anne bogart talks said during a podcast, "work the way you want to work now." she also wrote in her chapter on "resistance" that we must always commit to where we are now, or else what we need will never come.

excuses. that's what makes us avoid discipline. it's not easy to pursue discipline, that's why it's called discipline--it's hard.

sometimes, conditions will foster discipline, sometimes discipline comes at extreme cost. and sometimes, it's important to let go of discipline. we also need to be gentle when we fall off-punishing ourselves and therefore taking the joy out of what we do. being too disciplined--inhuman, in many ways--makes the discipline rigid, totalitarian, and dead.

the thing is, discipline is a gift. it is a way we tell ourselves: this is the time to do that thing that is what we want. it is a vehicle for joy, even if we need convincing every time.

i have a friend who wakes early every morning to take care of his orchids. i've heard his partner tease him about this, and i would giggle at his hobby. even though this daily care would drive me crazy with its idiosyncracies and pretty demanding schedule, the occasional parasites, my friend makes it look so easy. the teasing rolls off his back. but i imagine, it's not easy all the time. i imagine, he must undergo constant negotiation. but it's so clear by the way he goes about his morning chores: it gives him absolute joy. what a gift that is, to wake up every morning to joy, even if the extent of that joy might fluctuate daily.

this friend of mine has always struck me as very disciplined. thinking back on what i've known about him for over a decade, his discipline seems to be at the core of him. and he's far from a robot--there are many things he is not so disciplined about. and he is generally pretty laid back.

i think that part of my difficulty is that i'm too ambitious about my discipline. i want to be disciplined about everything all at once--my creative production, my creative consumption, my relationships, my politics, my economic wealth, my physical fitness, my public persona, my spiritual growth. i try to turn over too many new leaves at once.

i can hold that kind of discipline for everything for maybe 10 days, tops. then, inevitably, my discipline will falter--i'll oversleep or miscalculate. then i throw up my hands and give up, at least for a little while. so i get things done in emotionally taxing jags of 10 days followed by weeks of procrastination.

when i was at siti, i only needed to be disciplined about a few things. i let go of my looks, my "life style, food preparation. but i spent a full four weeks extremely disciplined about my creative production and consumption, my relationship to the world, my physicality and my spiritual growth. then, a curious thing happened. i found that i felt attractive, i began to be careful about the food i ate, and my political compass was becoming clearer and brighter. because i focused on certain types of discipline, i became more disciplined in other ways, too.

i must commit to what and where i am right now. and that happens to be someone who is returning to being an administrator. but more importantly, an artist who now has access to a new resource.

on SITI summer-part nine OR reflections

i'm now back in austin, lying in the bed i've missed for four weeks, petting my dog and remembering the smells of my own house. i've yearned for this. i've missed this. i've needed this.

all is changed, though. my body is very different. i didn't notice it morphing while i was in training, but being around familiar objects now has shown me how i've become denser and faster. and the connection between my body and my mind has become so much clearer. my body tells my mind more things, and my body listens, too.

i am melancholy. i am worried i will forget.

the last few days happened at breakneck pace. i was directing while also training. we were sewing performative "buttons" on all the work we did. it felt like we were all thinking: pack in the last of the information and hope to god it will stick. and now on this side, i'm nervous.

will i lose it? what will happen if i do? how do we integrate our undeniably changed selves back into the life that we worked so hard to forge?

lovely partner had to remind me that rest requires it own rigor. i need to reflect seriously, give space to my transition, recognize that i'm more prepared than i thought for many, many things. and still be gentle with my fears, my insecurities, my obstacles.

today, though, my body is strange. it wants to train. and i am not quite sure how to assuage it. it's 107 degrees and our AC barely works. and then the every day things that i had forgotten about: dishes, sweeping, driving, the post office--they all return. i am a bit confused about who i am, what to do with myself. i still haven't sat down with a good half hour to write out my thoughts for myself. i'm too busy adjusting to actively notice my adjustments.

and i'm also a bit loath to finish this post right now. it's been sitting open on my computer screen for over a day. i'm sure it's no surprise why. because this is my last SITI post. and that gives me profound pains and fears. just as i had to remember to take pieces of my community here to SITI with me--just so i could make it through the solitude, i am remembering to take pieces of people and lessons i learned while training, back into my home, with the fervor and passion i finally learned was always within me.

it's confusing, yes. but i realize that it's more than just my own brow that becomes knit in this process. i am now the suture that connects one space to another, and though those spaces serve different purposes and functions in the larger sense of the world, they are interdependent and woven together. how completely messy. how completely complicated. how completely delightful.

and now, we begin.

on SITI summer-part eight OR our bodies, our selves

on wednesday, i had yet another breakthrough about my body. i realized that the reason i "don't dance" is not because i'm afraid to look the fool (i look the fool all the time!), but because i have fundamentally hated the body i was given at birth. it's beyond "body issues" of wanting to be thin or attractive or sexy. somehow, since a very very early age, i learned that to have a girl body meant weakness, meant danger, meant potential violation. when barney o'hanlon said to me during a movement class, "kt, you're so good at folding, try more extending," i knew the reason i had so much trouble was because of my body hatred. extending my limbs meant showing my female body; showing my female body has always made me very, very afraid.

so i wept. and wept. and wept. and freaked out. and wept. and rehearsed. and freaked out again.

it's no small problem to deal with. afterall, i have hated being a girl since i was about four years old. yes, part of this is just my own gender identity and expression. and it's murky water around the line between gender expression and body image. the fact is, i have had a chance--many, in fact--to change my body. to take hormones, to do surgery. but i haven't. i respect those who do. but i resolved to keep my body as i was born with--vulnerable, flawed, and unmistakeably female. now i know why.

i see on the horizon the hope that one day, i will recognize my body as my own and as a finely-honed tool of expression and creativity. as something wholly connected to my mind and soul. as with any gender expression, i will continue containing it, pushing it, pulling it. but i will also choose to expose it. and revel in that vulnerability. someday, i will be that butch who loves her body as part of herself, rather than as something that could go nice on someone else.

the days after i wept, many things happened to reinforce my resolve around my body. all these different people kept calling me "gorgeous." and ellen lauren told me i "know how to move." i just need to continue exploring my limits and my possibilities, and embrace that fear as best i can.

on SITI summer-part seven OR depression, doubt and determination

they warned us last friday that this would be the week. the week when everyone would break down. when the entropy of fatigue would hit the wall of impossibility. when almost everyone would sit and say to themselves, "what the FUCK do i think i'm doing?"

actually, though, i was euphoric for the first half of the week. because i realized that the thing i semi-wrote about last post was actually acute depression trying to take away my life. and by realizing i was teetering on the edge of depression, i made the decision to fight it. i was the bouncer outside the door to the interior of my mind, stiff palm outstretched and telling depression that it couldn't come in. sadness, i let pass. loneliness, i let pass. confusion, i let pass. but i dug in deep to get depression out of my mind. i've had low-level depression since i was about 8 years old. it wasn't diagnosed until the year my mother died. up until february, i had been on anti-depressants for five years. it's been a struggle, especially off the meds.

on top of my decision to fight depression, rather than let it take over, i received several compliments in rapid succession. anne bogart said that i have a certain charisma that makes people trust me ("and i don't say that to many people..."), a fabulous new york director seems almost hell-bent on casting me in one of her productions, and i was receiving general affection from people i have begun to respect very deeply. i tried to give back. i listened and witnessed some of the most confident seeming people go through intense moments of self-doubt. i held people as they wept. i radiated warmth whenever i encountered anyone from the program. really, i did.

that was great. and lovely partner wisely told me to write down things people told me and sensations i experienced in these days of euphoria: "people here have begun to show a deep respect for me. people have said that they want to work with me. other actors and siti company members have said i have a 'great voice.' anne seems to enjoy me. people wish me well." i actually thought i was done with my "breakdown."

not quite.

the doubt began creeping in on wednesday. and thursday, after a very grueling viewpoints session, i actually heard myself saying, "what the fuck are you doing?!" today, it intensified. i kept shaking my head after every exercise i stood up to do. i felt ashamed that i couldn't do suzuki with full energy because my foot was in pain. and after i sat down from a short viewpoints exercise, a siti company member very gently reminded me release tension in my shoulders. i felt so discouraged that during the next exercise, i was completely terrified to be performing in front of my peers. the afternoon was a grueling suzuki session followed by a viewpoints session that i had been looking forward to: doing viewpoints in the big theater, with the sounds and light designers improvising with us. but all i could do was think "i'm such a shit actor. i'm such a self-indulgent sonovabitch." so i spent my whole time actually trying to dodge the light.

when i left the theater, i cried in silent wails slouched over a chair. embarrassed and hoping no one would find me.

it sucks. it really sucks. thing is. i know this doubt is temporary. and that's the difference. that is what tells me that i am keeping depression out of the interiors of my mind. after this week, i have a renewed determination toward the future. i decided to practice something anne talks about: speaking something into existence. the act of saying something makes it true, even if you have doubts.

and this is what i've been saying: i have a talent for directing and a strong presence on stage. i am not a dilettante. i am in this and good at it. i will find funding. this will be how i live.

i have begun sharing my work with the people here. my solo work as well as the work i've done with stamp lab. i feel like i'm speaking that into existence, too. by talking about "una corda," it will happen, and it will happen well. and by talking about my work with stamp lab, i will continue finding community around performance and theatre. even as i write this, the doubt creeps into the peripheries of my consciousness. and i think of advice i would give to someone saying the same things: that the doubt is a sign of change, and that we must have faith that the change goes in the right direction. i have to keep believing that.

i am determined.

on SITI summer-part six OR tension and balance

sometimes flight takes strange forms.

we flee for survival when we are in imminent danger. we flee awkward interactions. we flee things that push deep and specific buttons in our psyche. we flee the exciting. we even flee from precisely what we desire.

on wednesday, at the weekly symposium, i asked anne bogart: as artists and human beings, how do we prioritize the ethereal/creative/phantasmic aspects of making theatre along side the concrete/materialist realities of everyday life?

her response was: exactly.

i've been thinking about the question a lot. and thought that the act of thinking about it was in itself enough. i have been catching myself from fleeing many things: the limitations of my body, my insecurities as a performer, the solitude of spending this length of time with strangers. i've been hyper-sensitive to reigning in my instinct of flight--for "the work"--trying to somehow see the ethereal and concrete alongside one another.

but then, i fucked up. i was too preoccupied about tending to "the work," that i was missing a key element in my flight response: my real life.

i'm still having trouble processing what happened to articulate it very well. i know that ideally, what happens in the work directly relates to "real life." the practice of that is difficult. even as i have been entering closer and closer into certain emotional vulnerabilities, i've also allowed for detachment and distance. detachment and distance can be healthy--sure. but these acts of detachment were hurtful. and i can't even account for them fully.

i just keep running away.

some might say it's the human condition to continuously repeat folly, despite full knowledge of it. but i don't believe that. i won't allow it. so how come i keep encountering this vicious repetition? how come i keep running away when all i want to do is go closer? even as i keep searching, the answer eludes me.

on SITI summer-part five OR why the fuck am i so weepy?

saw the paul taylor dance company this evening. i honestly had no idea what to expect. but the siti company folks highly recommended it, so i got a ticket and went.

i realized midway through that i really have very little context for dance. i haven't seen ballet in decades, and the dance that i do see is usually politically or ethnically or site specific. so i watched the first two pieces with detached interest, trying to appreciate the composition or the lines or the very articulate bodies of the dancers.

but then it happened. i was suddenly moved. the music was poulenc's gloria. i, of course, knew all the words since i'm setting that mass text myself. the movement--it's so difficult to put into words--was formalistically pretty standard. but it told a story. a story of death and joy and fight and resignation. and as i watched, i again felt a heat well up from deep inside me run up my body and out my eyes. i was shocked. but i couldn't stop crying. i actually became frustrated with myself, "why am i crying?!" i struggled until i realized that this is what art does. it invokes feelings that cannot be articulated otherwise.

perhaps it is because i am exhausted all the time. or perhaps it is because i had a touching conversation just before the show. or perhaps it is because i've been thinking so much about the community i miss in austin right now. but the cause doesn't matter. what matters is that i was overcome with emotions that reside in my core that i might not have excavated otherwise.

i looked at the program afterwards. it was accompanied by excerpts from walt whitman's leaves of grass--the poem cycle that has the line, "i sing the body electric." the excerpts read as a joyous eulogy. and so did the dance.

anne bogart talks about how innovation and originality in the arts is overrated. that trying to do something totally new often misses the point. it's not whether it's new, it's how we approach it. and i think this show hit that home for me. even though paul taylor was part of that generation of choreographers who radically changed dance as we know it, his style seems almost classical in this historical moment. i think many of my compatriots were disillusioned because of that. and yet, even though the form itself was not new--even to me who knows little about dance--something about it deeply touched me.

i've been thinking about that this week, how to let go of "originality." i've been pairing that idea with the burden of representation. because i think about both a lot, and often in tandem. in my place of community accountability, i can't help but bare that burden of representation. but how does that intertwine with "originality?" if i'm trying to rewrite images of "my people," of whom there are so many stereotypes, how can i not strive for newness? and where does "authenticity," both culturally and creatively, lie in all this? i think they key is, in fact, in the approach, but i need to work out the details. i think that's why i'm here.

on SITI summer-part four OR the young man talking polemics in the cafeteria

let's face it: theatre tends to breed hyperbole.

there is a young man in the program who is, well, young. he's very sweet, and seems to have a lot of knowledge. but one thing he does is go around talking in polemics. most of the time, he get's a laugh or someone talks around it or over it. today, i witnessed someone call him out on it.

it was fascinating to watch. at first. but then i found myself engaging in the discussion despite the fact that i didn't really care about the subject (it was about musical theatre, which i really don't care about at all). what ended up happening was basically four of us were giving him a bit of a tongue lashing. i felt bad for a second, but it made me think a bit.

i still talk in polemics sometimes. as a breed, us shorbs tend toward debate. and going to oberlin just pushed that gene a little further into outright huge general arguments. but i've learned about them. a shit load of people have called me out on the polemics, and i've grown to be a bit careful.

because polemics are potentially destructive. at the core, they can divide communities, cause hurt, or break down safe-havens. and because of this potential destruction, they are highly powerful. and that power requires responsibility.

i realize in hindsight that i engaged in this discussion not because i cared about musical theatre, or even whether or not this young man did anything about it. but more because i wanted to say: you can't do polemics casually. you need to account for it and commit to whatever outcome ensues. it needs to be specific. a polemic that doesn't lead to eventual construction or reconstruction is no more than another way to be witty.

commitment to construction, redefining, and creating new structures and communities has made me think of why i'm here. about my place in this community here and my place in my community back in austin and diasporically. i spoke with lovely partner last night about how i come from a very specific subject position, and my path is paved with the love and support of many individuals and a cohesive *community* of active supporters. training here does me much personal good, yes. and, of course, it will enrich my abstract future audience, yes. but ultimately my training here is not mine to keep. i have a long list of people for whom i am learning. people who might not have access to this information otherwise, or at least that access would be heavily impeded. so when i move through a certain solitude of training with strangers who have very different politics, aesthetics, individual purpose and life experiences from me, i think of the faces of specific people who gave me ten, twenty bucks. or who said, "hey, i can't spare any money right now, but i think it's really important you are going." not only do they believe in me as an artist, but they need me to bring back what i learn. i am a vessel. and after i've begun sharing with those folks what i've learned, we will regroup and reforge into the future.

this specificity gives me purpose and keeps me quite far from the casual. the first couple days, i was strangely needy and over-sharey with other participants here. in some ways, i wanted to "recast" the people in my life with the ones here. but that's not gonna happen. it can't happen. i don't want it to happen. because i remain accountable to what and who awaits my return. that accountability drives my work, and that accountability lead me here. i am careful. i have purpose. i was chosen to be here just as much by siti as by the people i've worked with over the years. and as much as i have chose them.

i am thankful for this reminder. and perhaps that's why i am trying to speak in hyperbole a little bit less.