Thus quoth our beloved Mary Crisman, of YIP Podcast fame, in response to my eager plea for a new podcast (her pod-partner, Tammy, had informed us that the long-awaited cast was ready, but that Mary was "holding it hostage").
Drastic measures were necessary.
I warned Mary that I "once wrote Karim Nagi a limerick for his birthday and he has never fully recovered..."
To which Brave Ms. Mary replied: "Bring. It. On."
That was in April.
I toyed with a few ideas for a week or so, glanced through RhymeZone for some ideas ... Nothing "clicked" and I put it in the back of my mind and secretly hoped the YIP ladies would forget the offer altogether...
Back in High School I'd learned a bunch of Shakespearean sonnets for a contest and got hooked on iambic pentameter. So I tried my hand writing them and found I had a knack with rhyme and meter.
I'd write them as gifts for friends, or random silly stuff -- which went over much better than my usual overwrought musings.
But somewhere in my late twenties I pretty much stopped writing.
Each year, I wrote less stuff -- bits and pieces now and then, an occasional poem, a monologue or short play or two. I'm not sure whether this was because my main focus had switched to performing, or that I had started to lose confidence in my writing ability.
In '96, I took a class in writing a solo show and hated everything that came out of me -- the writing, the way I performed it. To this day I have never watched the showcase performance video.
There was a lot happening with me emotionally and psychologically at that time, but the bottom line was that my standards were getting higher and higher -- way beyond what I was able to produce. So I found myself mercilessly crushing even the beginnings of any idea that flickered in my mind.
And this thinking seeped into other areas of creativity: I increasingly doubted my ability to act, improvise, or even do stand-up comedy.
In other words, wanting to create good art demolished my ability to create any art. And since I was too afraid to suck, I stopped.
There is an excellent talk by Ira Glass that is variously referred to "The Gap" or "On Taste" that addresses this kind of creative block, where he says:
For the first couple of years, what you're making isn't that good ...but your taste is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making ... is still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that point ... they quit.
So he advises anyone who is stuck at that phase to just crash on through and create a lot of work, and remember: "It takes a while .... and you just have to fight your way through that." And even though Ira himself was still finding his feet on This American Life at that time, I had heard similar advice from other artists.
But at that point I didn't know if I wanted to write or act or go back to comedy.
So I started to bellydance.
And it was in dance, and with encouragement from various teachers and fellow students whom I admired, that I found myself moved by the music and the juicy bellydance moves, that I couldn't help but dance!
And second, I began first to develop a tolerance for "The Gap", and for not caring so much if I was "good" yet.
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| Ranya Renée, photo by Lina Jang |
Ranya Renée, who is most responsible for transforming me into a professional dancer, challenged us: "Dare to be boring!"
In her Performance Prep workshop series, she encouraged us to come from a place of feeling, not worrying so much about how we looked but focusing on connecting to the music.
And, most importantly, she helped us lose our fear of sucking.
"Because sometimes," she'd grin, "You have to let yourself suck if you want succeed!" We groaned, but the message was clear: Work hard, do your best, but don't get stressed if you're not as good as you want to be.
You'll get there.
And slowly, the paralysis melted ... I began to take Dancemeditation classes, where Dunya encouraged us to connect writing to dance. I felt awful and awkward ... but I wrote.
And then I started blogging ... then writing and performing some comedy again ... even doing a little Shakespeare now and then.
And I took classes in comedy, sketch writing ... and creating a solo show.
So here it was April 2014, I had every reason to be confident in my writing abilities.
And once again I was stuck.
Months went by. Then in late June the YIP Podcast thread on Facebook picked up again. Other listeners started griping:
Where was the darned podcast?!?!?
Mary quipped, "I'd like to blame my glacial pace on Carol's blatant refusal to furnish me with a bad poem...."
She promised the next YIP would be forthcoming, regardless of my poetic lapse. But as I read through the chain of endearingly silly comments, I started feeling inspired.
After all, this was YIP Podcast for crissakes -- the best, funniest, most appreciative audience around -- specifically asking for a bad poem.
Yes -- BAD!
Laughing, I sat down around 11pm on June 24 and, in about a half-hour, banged out fourteen lines of perfect iambic pentameter Fakespeare silliness:
O why hast thou forsaken us, dear YIP
When but a snip or quip would surely sate
Our thirst for podcast YIPpage?? Yet your grip
Still fiercely holds the treasured aural bait!
You tempt and tease your audience too much
Dear YIPsters -- we grow barb'rous at your gate
And rain upon you thund'rous cries--as such
Demand that you RELEASE THE YIP, lest Fate
Confound you with a YIP-borne curse so dire
That all the goddesses of YIP would weep
To plead on your behalf; but we require
The long awaited YIP held in your keep
And thus will not relent till it is freed.
For once released, the YIP brings joy, indeed!
A few days later, I read it to my parents who got a kick out of it, and remarked that it was strange took such a short time to write. "Sometimes it can take days or weeks to finish a poem," I said. "Even though it's only fourteen lines, it's kind of like a puzzle. It can take a while to fit it all together."
"Well, maybe you had been working on it all along," my father said. "Like with any problem. You focus on it a bit, and then walk away for however much time is necessary. Then a while later the solution comes to you all at once."
This, I think, is true, not only with this bit of poetic silliness, but with what I had experienced for years as a "blocked artist; perhaps it wasn't simply that I was "blocked" -- that I could have pushed through it with a blast of willed confidence -- but rather that I wasn't ready.
But I was getting ready ... slowly.
As I focused on developing more external aspects of my personal and creative life -- on the craft and technique of dance, the basics of joke writing, improvisation skills -- my unconscious was gradually assembling larger works which emerged quickly once they and I were ready.
To quote Shakespeare's Hamlet: "The readiness is all."
And while that context had more to do with fatedness, I prefer to think in terms of patience and trust: First -- try to sit down and do the work. If I can't work, then I don't force it. I'll do other things. Or do nothing for a while.
But I continue to listen, and trust that whatever I'm trying to create is brewing.
And once it's ready -- and I'm ready -- it will let me know.....
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