The Readiness Is All -- So YIP to It!!

"I find bad poetry to be extremely motivating...."

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.

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.....

Visioning the New Year Part III: The Goddess Lives...on Neon Pink Posterboard!

Continued from Part I: Mandala Misgivings, and Part II: The Jason Journal

...And then came Goddess Vision Board Day......

Not off to an easy start, I showed up at the First U chapel more than two hours late -- but enthusiastically loaded down with an overflowing box of markers, magazines, and all my old art supplies (I actually used to be pretty decent with a paint brush and was twice the Art Director of my HS literary magazine). 

The project was in full swing, with the group cheerily clipping, pasting, and chatting around a table at the center of the room.

And in the center of the table was the dreaded stack of periodicals -- to me a glossy-leafed impenetrable mess.

My head buzzed with an all too familiar leaden throb. There was just too much stuff!

I took a few calming breaths: "Follow your impulses. You'll find your way to the images you need. Clip out what moves you, leave the rest." To many in the room, I figure these were easy and obvious instructions... but to me the very notion was painfully difficult, almost petrifying. 

(I have a history of anxiety, by the way, and started furiously grinding my teeth in my sleep at age seven... but that is a matter for another day...)

Too daunted by the overflowing table, I circled the room, finding my way to some pretty neon colored posterboards that the facilitators had brought. I picked out a pink one. And I don't even like pink ... usually.

But I liked this one.

I set it down on the stage area at the head of the chapel and made my way to the Big Table o' Stuff.

But I wasn't ready to deal with it. 

I got my art box, which was bursting with so much stuff I needed a bungee cord to keep it together, and even then the pastels, pencils, acrylics, and brushes had collapsed into anarchy during the trip. So I organized the box -- even though I knew I probably wasn't going to use much of it, the simple act of going through this part of my own history, which had been left untouched for decades, grounded me enough to face the table.

And so I returned to the stack, following my improv teacher's advice:  When in doubt, breathe through your mouth, follow your impulses, and trust that whatever you do is The Right Thing.

Well, it's my freaking collage after all, I figured -- don't I get to say what's right or not???

Actually, I kind of don't -- that's the problem.

I've learned, when it comes to creativity, we can't just choose willy-nilly. There is a "right", but it must be found, not forced. 

A thing is "right" if it feels right, if it "pops". So I figured, if I choose by that guidance, then whatever I choose will be "right" enough to proceed.

I leafed through the nearest magazine and tore out any image that "popped" -- no matter how incongruous, absurd, or even clichéd it seemed. Stuff like "Do What's Good For You" jumped out, and "Pay It Forward", "INSPIRE!" (in bold italic capitals), a determined woman working out, an old typewriter, a big cat and a cobra, angels ... even Middle Eastern royalty ... and a figure of a blinded young man in the nurturing arms of his burqa'd mother ... all of it resonated. 

I brought my scraps to the posterboard and cut them carefully, cleanly and placed them around the board as though it were a jigsaw -- large images at the corner and along the bottom, giving the piece an "anchored" feel.

And then the smaller bits swirling around the an image of myself, clipped from a Blood on the Veil flyer, at the center. Topped off with swirls of glitter, stars and musical notes, the mandala completed itself.

And here it is!!

At first I thought I would do more work at home, that I should fill in the empty spaces .... but when I tacked it to my door ... I realized it was done. Wholly done.

Over the years I've gotten the same advice from spiritual, psychological, and creative teachers:  If you want to make a good choice, pay attention to how a thing feels, because it is through our feeling alone that we experience joy, satisfaction, contentment. If joy is what we want as the result, then the initial choices must have joy in them. Further, it is a sense that is entirely ours and not subject to the judgmental whims of others.

And it is through feeling that the "divine feminine" speaks to us, an inner wisdom that guides, calms, contains our varying states of life, that gives us an inner vision to complement and ground the outer Polaris spun by culture, media, friends, teachers.

Without the former, the latter can tear us up by the roots -- a hapless state in which I spent many years, and which left me unable to create anything at all, much less a physical manifestation of my own Inner Goddess.

Yet now -- plain and simple as neon pink Staples-bought posterboard -- there it was.

And every day, when I leave home, and return again, I see my Goddess Vision Board. And I ask myself, "Do I enjoy looking at this? Do I feel inspired, comforted, invigorated by it? Do I smile when I see it without looking to improve it?"

And every day, the answer is:  Yes.