We journeyed south and west. Spent two weeks in California. Explored San Francisco art, sport, places, faces. Camped on Central Coast beaches. Soaked in ocean, bathed in waterfalls. Waved hello to sea otters, seals, dolphins, hummingbirds, sunsets. Stayed with friends in hostel, attic, living room. Reclaimed a haunted city, transforming rocked memories with lovingkindness. Reunited with friends, family. Found clear thinking, renewed tenderness and joy. Spent a week back in the normal routine. And now I'm off again, to the north and west Washington Coast. To individually and collectively build community. To transform space through egalitarian teaching and learning. Puget Sound Workshop Workshop, let's make us grow. Grateful for all these summer goings.
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I've been slow to post these weeks. Erratic on this blog and on social media.
This is intentional, so I can focus on my work and life with more attention. Today I head out on a two week adventure with my life-love to California. San Francisco and the Central Coast. I plan to be even more erratic in talking about what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. So I can do (and not do) with more fullness while I'm away. It's funny, that desire to apologize for not being present everywhere, everywhen. Available to talk about all the things I'm doing as I'm in process. But now, as I'm working on a new play, continuing a larger screenplay, co-creating a new performance with Migration Theory and teaching teaching teaching and preparing for a new job where I'll be teaching teaching teaching, all my social media activity, including this process blog, is getting in the way of my process. I'm not pulling out completely from everything internet (except over these next two weeks), but now and come future I'm allowing myself to be more sporadic. And I'm all the happier for it. More productive, balanced and sustainable. I look forward to sharing with you what's happening (and how and why I'm doing what I'm doing) when it feels relevant to my work and life. When it feels helpful to me and maybe to you. I will likely find more of an Anne Bogart blog posting schedule than an Austin Kleon newsletter schedule. Thanks for understanding, for reading, for being, for doing what you do best. Whatever that best may be for you, keep doing it in the way that suits you best. With kindness and gratitude at the heart of it all, perhaps. Which is what I want to send you. All my gratitude, H I found this in a notebook I kept a couple years ago, writings during a fantastic workshop by a teaching artist specializing in Hip Hop Foundations for youth classes. Shine the Light I find the more I teach, the more I learn. I like what comes from the word facilitator. I don't like to call myself a teacher. The closest I get is teaching artist, teaching writer. Because of how much I learn from my students. My friends. Colleagues. The world. I love this act of discovering, Learning something new every day about space, time, me, you, family, us. I don't always like what I learn but I like the light shone on this new bit of globe. I want to share my process, As much as I want to share my work, As much as I want to travel and make new work. If I could bring in that journey, my journey, learn yours, We can share space together In an attempt to figure out what we as an us have to say, And what we can do about the struggle, About the ugly, and find the beauty, And mirror each other on this path to deeper understanding. Slash. Span continents. All the self. As knowledge as possible. We as in us have to say. I like that comes out. Space time me you family. What good is telling them about My love if I give love. So that someone can give it back to me. Keep an open mind. Allow yourself to be excited. Pretending that you know what you're doing. It's a big teaching summer for me, one looking forward to brand new teaching experiences in the fall (to be announced soon...), so I'm glad to find these words now. Whatever they are -- process writing, poetic material, working notes, they pull me back to the core of what makes teaching a fueling part of my creative process.
Productivity ignites again. Lots of healing, lots of waiting, lots of stillness. Leads to this time undergoing big projects, entering into lots of teaching. More active, more energized. Paying attention to where my curiosities are taking me. I go at my work much easier than I used to. Less choking. More inviting. Following the impulse, writing what my characters are asking to say. Sharing my interests, listening to what young artists and students want to learn. Challenging myself, each other. Approaching big risk, change, new steps. Outside my comfort zone. What my body mind has been pining after. And so here I go. Another step by step. Here are some things in old notebooks I'm finding and listening to, And how I'm thinking about seeing and being seen: "The seeds you water are the seeds you grow." Buddhist saying And so what am I watering? "What we see in an artist's work is what they attend to." Anne Bluethenthal And so what am I attending to? "In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice (or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot -- and thereby guaranteeing it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice." David Bayles/Ted Orland And so what am I choosing? "I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices." Audre Lorde How do we care for the other? How do I care for the other in me? So I can care for the other in you? By investing in this kind of art making? Art that is of the people, by the people, for the people. And always asking... Who is onstage -- who is in power? How do we see work? How is work being seen? How do we define ourselves so we have some kind of control over the lens we're being viewed through? And remembering when I did this, a great practice: Step back from my work over time and look at it. The last ten works, are there linkages? Consistencies? It might be time for me to revisit this again now. And you? What are you working on? What are you asking? What are you following? What are your eyes following? All your senses? Current InvestigationsHow can I tell story using only sound? Only music? Movement? Using only space? Visual art? The environment? Textiles? What stories need to be expressed through those limits? Right now? How am I limited right now? How are you? Physically, mentally, spatially (and&and)? What's the interrogation/aesthetic/narrative/inquiry/mapping of those boundaries? Of those differences? Of those spaces between opposites? |
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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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