I wrote myself out of abuse,
out of disorder, out of homelessness, out of numbness. find vitality Meaning exists in every moment because we say so. We create meaning by collecting observations. strip down do less show less That's where I find beauty, elegance. Simplicity is my way to wholeness. I am already whole. I feel my back pulse. neurons can rewire brain chemistry can shift A diagnosis said I was hardwired to need antipsychotics forever, that I would never be stable not really. I learn daily my neurons' plasticity. All thanks to repetition. Yes I get tempted to work longer to stay deeper in screens but that doesn't help me. I'm learning to stop sooner. pace stay healthy shift take time to breathe the blue the bicycles a ringing bell resist the urge to control hear the music of stillness I'm captured by cremated energy. keep it small your day will thank you I know you're addicted let go your body/brain will thank you
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I invest in the edge between brutality and beauty. I write until I run out of ink. I work until I run out of life. I want to perform confidence. It's no longer a luxury. It is what I need in order to do the job I must do. I need to pull in the authority and believe I know what I'm doing. Say what is on my mind. Listen. Let that be enough. I give away my time a lot to help others with little things because I feel I should. This is a distraction. I need to hold each activity in my palms and sit with it. Marie Kondo it. Ask, does it give me joy? And if not, and especially if it also doesn't feed my belly or build bridges, I can let it go. Each thing I take on has several elements inside. Going deeply into them takes me away from other things. I don't want to do any of it halfway. I want to immerse in each job, not fall apart, not take it on the surface level. I want to aim higher, go big. Survey for New Play
My next full-length play, see in the dark, will explore how we handle the threat of outsiders and ask the price of suspicion versus compassion.
As research for see in the dark, I'm asking some anonymous questions in the survey below. I'd love your input, as in-depth or quick as you'd like. You don't have to answer all the questions, but I appreciate your input toward any of these topics. You can also write answers to any/all of these questions below in the comments section, over email through my contact page, or if we're connected on Facebook/Twitter. I'll embed the form below and here is a link to the survey. Thank you for your insights! By posting answers, know that your ideas, experiences and words may be used in this new play. Thanks again! Heidi Kraay Happy New Beginnings, everyone! Here are some of my highlights from last year. I'm very glad to be in 2019, but there were some sweet moments to look back on from 2018, for sure, some that I'd forgotten.
Highlights:
Here are my three big goals for 2019 and 2020: 3 Big Goals for the Next Two Years:
2019 is my year of compassion, generosity and gratitude toward myself and others. Why do you do what you do? From 2015...still relevant, and I'm still evolving...
I do what I do to find firm footing. I need art like air to survive and I know others do too. I seek groundedness. I write my story so I can speak it. I share it so others can do the same. I act with courage, write and speak with courage so I can stop my constant shame cycle and change that narrative. I share so others may do the same. I expose my vulnerable bits to connect with others. I experiment with empathy so we can find mutual connections between everyone in a room together seeking how our lives aren't so different. I'm skilled at bravery. Go deeper into that. Be bolder. I write to connect my fractured parts. To put my story into characters' bodies. And physicalize them. Make them seen. To feel how everybody hurts sometimes and to find strength to move on. I write to show stories of the silenced, the before-me and others, to reveal the humanity of people we believe to be unlovable, impossible to connect with, a character who fits our definition of un-relatable,. Can we connect with humans we shut out as the other, as unnecessary, a number? The homeless on the street, the schizophrenic in the hospital, the jailed in prison, the sociopath with a cause, the kid who has a hard time in the holiday months. Love them not by showing only the good they do despite themselves, but by seeing with exactitude all their parts, the brutal and the beautiful. Parents, friends, teachers, family of children ages 6-12, would you help me with a bit of research? BackgroundI'm starting a play where two 12-year-old kids living near the equator (and some animals in the north and south poles) work together to save their homes, help their planet, protect polar bears from drowning and penguins from losing their land. They'll break impossible odds to accomplish more than the adult humans around them even try to do. I'm not sure they win their fight or even get close, but they do above and beyond what we imagine possible. RequestThat said, would you ask the young people in your life -- if they could do anything to help out the planet, to stop the poles from melting, to slow down the disastrous effects of climate change on all living beings, what they would do? Before asking, you can find out what they know about climate change and/or share any details you know, whatever they should know to help answer this question, whatever can prepare them. Then, would you listen and share any answer(s) you're willing to share with me? Click HERE or comment below to share (or tell me in person or over the phone, if we know each other and that's our best method of contact). Feel free to share this request far and wide! If the young people in your life are a little under or over 6-12, that's okay too. Magical, superhuman, fantastical answers welcome. The more impossible the better. Though I'd love to know what they think by early December, there's no deadline to respond -- I'm happy to hear whenever, even after the play is written. Maybe it will start your first conversations with your children/students/favorite kiddos about climate change and conservation. So much the better! Again, no answer too big (or small), too weird or outlandish. I want to problem-solve this play for young audiences about climate change like someone who can't reach the top of the refrigerator without climbing onto the counters (or someone who doesn't speak human, but those are harder answers to gather -- however, if your cat or dog or whatever has ideas worth sharing, I'm all ears). DisclaimerI may or may not use these answers, or parts of them, in this play -- called Polar Opposites: An Impossible Tale. The main purpose of asking young people's ideas is for inspiration, to help me see from their perspectives, shed an adult brain attitude of what's possible and allow in sparks for dreaming beyond my everyday habits and patterns. However, if I end up using your young person's idea(s) and they are not submitted anonymously, I will let you know. Whether or not I use the ideas tangibly, they are all useful. Moreover, I am interested in hearing these ideas beyond their specific usefulness. Questions?What am I not saying about this request that makes you curious? Feel free to ask me, either by commenting below or clicking HERE. Thanks!Thank you! I so appreciate your time and help! And big thanks to the little ones for their gigantic imaginations.
If you're interested in seeing the play and live in Boise, Idaho (or can get there easily), there will be a staged reading of Polar Opposites February 17, 2019 at Boise Contemporary Theater, through their Children's Reading Series. This is the third play in my Animal Trilogy, a trilogy of plays for young audiences that use animals as a way to work with big subjects like grief, displacement and climate change. If you're interested in reading the first two, Rajpurr: Tale of a Tiger and Slap: A Beaver Tale (and/or Polar Opposites: An Impossible Tale when it's drafted) contact me HERE, or read more about them HERE. Thanks again for asking, listening and sharing, and Happy November! September 2015I think about the way the universe is made up. And what I heard on an NPR break the other day, with a scientist an astrophysicist I think, saying this is how he is going against the grain--
I believe we matter as human beings in the universe. Not a popular opinion, after Copernicanism. The universe with its stars, all of them, more and more discovered to have planets, and it gets more likely that these planets have life. And so we matter not because we are different, because we are unique and the universe revolves around us, but because we are part of the tapestry of life. Beings who can protect life. And we matter, our responsibility in mattering is to take care of life. To keep it. Protect life and guard it. That is huge responsibility. One we are forsaking. (A paraphrasing, original source forgotten.) looking back on looking backFrom September, 2015 (and I'm still working on becoming) Feel how the emotions change now, heart rate and face tension, after reading the entry I wrote the day after Dad's spinal surgery. Time is all now. I feel the tingle. When I'm in lows, I focus my writing less on process and why I do what I do. I think less about the big picture. More about what's happening on my insides. Less about sensory detail. More about raw emotion. Sometimes memory. Usually the right here right now vague feelings and cyclic thoughts. And I record. And I process. And I sit. Observe. And I think -- at the core, this is why I do this. To take care of me. To get the notes out about what it's like right here right now. To get more exact, articulate and less desperate. To trust my mind. To let go and share. There are big picture thoughts that go with it, that have to do with audience and what I'm trying to communicate why with whom for what purpose. But at the base, this is the foundation. I write to connect with me. It doesn't always make me feel better, but it gets the howling more manageable. When I do this every day, it makes me stronger, more powerful as a human. Yes, I don't make much money as a writer. I have to think a lot about how can I squeak by. I spend a lot of time doing this practice, completely financially unpaid work. Yes, my logical brain tells me it's important: to practice as an artist, and then my panic practical brain says but so much? It's important to get financially stable and how can you with this? And what are you contributing to the world? But in a larger term scope, in taking in the truth about my history and my trajectory, I see that this is what it takes for me to get through the day. Every day. The alternative, I see, is me in hospital, me medicated, me living dependent, me out late every night making bad decisions. That me is contributing a whole lot less and spending more. Or...Here. I need to write and I feel it these days when there is burning in my chest and I notice the tension build and fall in shoulders. When I see the weight. And hold it. And it draws my mouth downward. When the throat and the gut and the head dive. When I open up my brain to exposure and I get caught wrestling inside. When I read about the day Dad's results came back, detailing all the organs where his melanoma spread: brain, spine, liver, lungs, kidneys. When I notice how panic and overworking shielded me from feeling for years. Everything task oriented. And now I'm unleashing. When I got back from the M.E. experience of homeless abuse and un-me-ing, I didn't want to show any awful side of myself. I wrote about it yes, but didn't speak about it. The way I wrote about it in pieces I released veiled the truth enough that yes I felt exposed but the art felt separate from me. There was my work and my private life. Fractured. Compartmentalized. This left me cold and armored, still denying myself. Now this, this is hard too, this pure feeling, but it is real. Unmasked. Familiar. And this is my reason to write as much as any lofty ones. I can only get to the point where I am opening up connections, speaking to the silent if I allow myself to speak and listen, too. I exist. I matter. And so do you. When in a crisis, look out for someone you can help.
I am working on listening. On asking questions and listening for understanding, not to teach or show or judge or show contention, show how smart I am. This listening is difficult and requires attentiveness, energy and effort. It requires an attitude that wants connection and empathy to build, even when I have something to say that will mean something right now. Stepping back and truly observing. This space is white. Workshopping How to Hide Your Monster in the Creede, Colorado mountains, the spirals opening up this play during this development process are revealing the guts underneath each character's story. I'm glad I spent a year away from this script. Grateful to be working on it with artists who've never touched it before (the amazing Jeni Mahoney [director], Manuel Zarate [dramaturg] and a brilliant cast), whose questions and observations help me find the core heat inside and trace the strongest throughlines, tracking the outpourings that crack through the floor.
All week we've splayed open the skin to dig out the meat (every time we make that reference in the rehearsal room I imagine Han Solo slicing open the tauntaun to save Luke from hypothermia). In these last days before this version's first public reading (there will be a second in Pagosa Springs on Monday) it's about finessing the edges, sewing up this monster after its surgery to see how it moves with new life. But what else is burrowing inside this play? What other questions are driving me and what other interests, curiosities, visions? The revelation at the end is much bigger now, more Ancient Greek, Sam Shepard in its twisting. What will that unlock, and what questions might that discovery bring? Such focused time on this play, without having to bother much with other work or responsibilities, or even my normal routine, boy it is a godsend. And this area, remote enough, these San Juan mountain surroundings and the energy here from other playwrights and artists at work... I hope you all get a chance to get away soon, to dive into the work that you've been itching to scratch in a magical environment with smart, kind, inspiring people, too. I'm feeling quite lucky to be here now. Thank you Creede and HBMG Foundation! XOXO, H |
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$1, $10, $100, whatevs :) Heidi KraayProcess notes on a work in progress (me). This mostly contains raw rough content pulled out of practice notebooks. Occasional posts also invite you into the way I work, with intermittent notes on the hows and whys on the whats I make. Less often you may also find prompts and processes I've brought to workshops, as well as surveys that help me gather material for projects. Similar earlier posts from years ago can be found on: Archives
April 2024
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