Getting off the Couch: Part 2

The thought of not doing something that a huge part of me (that doesn't even feel like "me" necessarily because the desire isn't manufactured or dreamed up but just there) became more awful than the thought of doing the "something" and doing it badly.

Ryan Kasprzak on So You Think You Can Dance was interviewed right before he got cut (his brother, Evan, made it and is now in the top 14). [You can go here to watch highlights of their auditions from this season...really fun!]. Ryan does Broadway tap. He said that he heard over and over from teachers, producers, choreographers that he was too short, too chubby, too bald, too whatever to be successful in the kind of dance he wanted to do. "That shit kept me on the couch for four years," he said. He's done all kinds of things since he got off the couch. And he just auditioned for the next season of SYTYCD and will be going to Vegas for another shot.

At the end of graduate school, during my thesis defense, which marked a four-year MFA endeavor as well as a major shift from writing fiction to writing mostly poetry, one of my professors told me and the committee and those friends who'd gathered for the event that she almost fell asleep reading my thesis (a collection of poems).

Once you start, you have to deal with that who-are-you-kidding-anyway voice—and not always just from inside yourself. Then you have to actually keep doing the thing you got off the couch to do. You have to do things badly and deal with that. You have to hear criticism and experience rejection.

It's good for the bones is what I say—because you discover (or I did anyway) why you are actually doing something (i.e., Not so a certain professor will like your work). You find the you you are doing it for. You find that there is no Ultimate Final Approval. There are moments of glory—when you get published, do the performance, etc. But like artist Mike Mills says (see video on "outloud" blog June 19):

You just work your hardest and you do whatever the best is that you can, and you don’t like it...you don’t think you did very well so you do another job to prove that you're better than the last job you did and then the same thing happens and you do another one and then all of a sudden you're 41...and then you think I’ll do better on the next one and I’ll totally prove to everyone that I’m okay and you keep going and going...

It's more a lifestyle than a means to an end I guess is what I'm saying.

And the only way to get confidence—creative confidence—is to make things and keep making them—muscles, books, blog postings, photographs, dances, WHATEVER. And stick with the people who will cheer you on while you do it—but do it even if you can't find those people.

The best things I've heard from people after I've read my work in public are 1) they were moved and 2) it made them want to write and make things. That's not why I do it of course—any of it. I do it because when I'm not doing it, I sink deeper and deeper into my couch, wonder why I'm here, forget what the point is... Participating in the way that I do is the point. It's what gets me up every morning, makes me eat, post to my blog, go to work, see films, write poetry, go listen to live music (and exhaust myself in large rowdy throngs of other participants), be an extra in a video of your favorite band (see opening picture above)!

My friend KO was clearly inspired in a new way by Every Little Step. We had coffee Friday night and I saw it in her eyes. Something is changing and it's a beautiful thing to see.

Getting off the Couch: Part 1

The couch being whatever that place is, that magnetized, attractive, comfortable metaphorical piece of furniture that keeps you from doing what you know you want to do...

The other night I got an e-mail from KO who was talking about a movie she'd gone to see, Every Little Step*, a documentary which follows the journey of several dancers through auditions for the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line.

Here's what she wrote in response to seeing the film:

When I was about 13 to 16 my dad used to take me to Broadway shows, and when I saw A Chorus Line (I think in '77 or '78)—that's what I wanted....It was so great to see these dancers that weren't all tall, skinny, flat-chested ballet types. I started taking jazz classes...I used to play the parts of the show in my basement, I had the album and would sing the songs when no one was home. But, being horribly shy, with no self esteem and certainly no one at home encouraging me—I shoved it to the back of my mind and whenever I thought about it—it was with the thought of 'Who were you kidding anyway?'

That last sentence is the most moving to me and the most important. I thought this for years after I quit gymnastics (and I even got to have a little bit of glory before I stopped competing). I didn't get to live my Olympic dream. I considered myself a failure for not staying with it. I don't think that now because I have a different perspective (ie; my body would not have held out), but I do know intimately, as a lot of us do, the sometimes-painful realization that "you can never go back." The really getting that you won't be 15 again. Or 18. That my right hip hurts if I move it a certain way...like in any direction besides straight ahead. That whatever I'm going to be or do has got to start right here with whatever I have and am.

Having said that, the present tense version of "Who were you kidding, anyway?" comes with the territory of living a creative life. For years, that phrase stopped me from doing anything. Writing. Dancing. Keeping a blog. Moving forward with creative projects.

I look at people who are successful—publishing books, performing, getting pieces broadcast on This American Life (ie; Things I Would Like to Do One Day...) And I'd get frozen in the mindset that that success, or even the "doing," was what other people did.

The belief is so specific that I used to imagine that those people all knew something that I didn't, that they got together at secret meetings, that they knew the "special people." But when I cleared all that shit away, I knew the only difference between me and them (in most cases) is that they got off the couch and did it. While I, more less, sat around just wishing I did.

This big, drastic couch period I am talking about for me was after a relationship ended. I was watching television, yup, on my couch, and it was some commercial with hip-hop dancers in it. And I felt the ache I usually did seeing amazing dancers. I want to do that! I could do that, too, if somebody just showed me how. But then "it's too late. I'm too old. I missed my chance." I heard myself. I thought: is that what I'd tell a friend if she told me she was aching to dance? No, I would tell her: go take a class! So that's what I did. I took a hip-hop class. The class led to being asked to be part of a group which led to rehearsing and dancing and competing and performing... it wasn't MTV. But there it was. The dream. (Did I mention I was not 18 doing this? I was 35. Just an FYI).

"Getting off the Couch: Part 2" tomorrow!



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