Exhausted from doing-ness. Too much stuff to do, even, especially, in this summertime. I'm not rejuvenating. I'm killing myself over the garden - the garden! And these summer dance shows. Why am I doing it all? I could buy groceries and do yoga and have time to read and sit and be. This has always been a problem, making these big projects to accomplish.

These insistent misdirections. It's like a tangle of yarn - going every which way, back on its path, sideways, zig zag, to get to the end. Looped over. Passing by itself again and again. It's like not knowing if Paul Ben-Itzak was right when he sent an email back to my performance announcement: "You self-centered narcissus, do I care?" or if he's just crazy. It's like not knowing if he wrote that just to me or to everyone. It's like not knowing if the water trickling out of the tap on my toes in the bathtub is very hot or very cold. It's like not knowing when I pluck the guitar string if the note is flat or sharp. A state of confusion in a state of frenzy. That just about sums me up.

But what it comes down to is, he's right and he's wrong. He's sane and he's crazy. It's me and it's everyone. The water is hot and it's cold. The note is flat and it's sharp. The yarn, string, thread, ribbon is going this way and that way, the right and the wrong way. My incomprehensibility of this - which William Burroughs says a notable linguist says is a fault in the English language, an incompatability of opposites, the insistent "or" - is my main problem. A fine problem to have.

This week I'm in New York City performing in an improvisation festival with new and old friends. Here I am in my sister Julie's apartment in Brooklyn with some other new and old friends.

My friend Hiroyuki Ito visited last week, a wonderful time. Among many great conversations, one thing he said has stuck with me. I'm not sure why. Maybe because he was relating it from personal experience, or because I haven't considered the scene from this angle so much.

He said that even until the very end of our lives, all of us creatures - people, cats, dogs, and all the rest -  have such a strong, pervasive appetite for life, until the moment of death. The very last inhalations are desires, for savoring the qualities of the air at that moment - the particular smell, taste, feel of it. Life is about living, and worth living until the very end. It is worth witnessing that living-ness through and through.  This appetite is precious, buoyant, our deepest cause for hope.

 Look here to see some of Hiroyuki's photography work.

Sustenance

We may think it's borders guarded by machine guns and dogs, political totem poles like the President of the United States, infrastructures like plumbing, electricity, phone lines, internet signals - that hold the world together, but actually, it's the songs of Joni Mitchell. Wherever her songs ring out - on reel to reel, record, cassette tape, compact disc, online, video, ipod, ipad, iphone, and alive - they do strong sustenance, feed the universe out of ever-full drawers, keep things from falling apart, keep patterns just enough in healing, in tune, in peace, in pleasure, out of despair. It's Joni. If I didn't truly believe this, I wouldn't believe anything.

In this week's rite I'm working to generate some energy - some swinging, shaking, drumming, falling, holding energy -  to help along a friend and former student, Dan Yablonsky, who's been in a biking accident.  I'm breathing, moving, praying for a full recovery! Dan created a wonderful dance piece this past year, "Non-Mechanical Tools of Human Advancement" with a filing cabinet.

So with that, and a little help from Joni, via Prince - Dan, this is for you! And also for all those watching over you - holding, healing, keeping you in their minds and hearts, near and far.

No to heartless intellectual dances.
No to blankfaced dances.
No to unfeeling dances.
No to self important process.

No to commentary on self important process.

No to snobbery about style.

No to schools of thought.
No to trends.
No to marketing.
No to awards ceremonies.
No to respectability of the art form.
No to denial of gender fucked-up-ness in dance opportunities.
No to denial of one's own contributions to the problem.
No to status-advancing venues.
No to grant proposals.
No to powerful presenters.
No to social networking.
No to ego.
No to no ego.

I love artists who speak from and to a whirling uncontainable imagination; who craft their art around rolling many-textured mysteries; who through their art attempt to be with these inner and outer landscapes.

state of the artist

I've heard word from a number of my female artist friends about the writing from whole hog a few weeks back. It's comforting to hear that it strikes a chord.

My friend Joyce Lim sent back a great offering - Diane Ragsdale's post from State of the Artist, a conversation sponsored by the the McKnight Foundation in Minnesota. While I am battling my younger-self demon, who upbraids me for shifting, for getting older - Ragsdale is suggesting a paradigm shift. It's useful. It could even make this particular demon vanish into thin air - or split like a potato, or peel like an onion.

Ragsdale points to Charlie Leadbetter and Paul Miller's 2004 pamphlet "Pro-Am Revolution," which states that it's not helpful or accurate for artists who create work on a professional standard to be devalued for under-achieving some illusory money-based "professional" standard. It points to the vitality of thousands of professional-standard American artists who spend their lives' emphasis on their art, but who also work other part-time or full-time jobs. Such artists by current paradigms are often considered amateurs, failures, or both, since they are not fully financially supported by their art-making. Leadbetter and Miller suggest a new title for this kind of artist, "pro-am," and positive perception of their position and contribution to American society. I'm not crazy about the title, but I like the sentiment.

John Lennon also responded to me, when he was exactly my age, in a 1980 article titled "John Lennon: Must an Artist Self-Destruct?" from Robert Palmer's posthumous collection of writings, Blues and Chaos. Palmer interviewed Lennon and Yoko Ono as they were preparing to release Double Fantasy, a shared album and return to creative and public work after five years of reclusion. It came out only a month before Lennon was killed.

Lennon said,

"Is it possible to have a life centered around family and a child and still be an artist?...In a way, [Yoko and I are] involved in a kind of experiment. Could the family be the inspiration of art, instead of drinking of drugs or whatever? I'm interested in finding that out."

"You know what I listened to for the past five years? Muzak! For the chores I was doing around the house, it was perfect. I know people are going to say, 'Oh, that's because he's got to be forty and got soft.' Well, it might be that; it's irrelevant to me. The attitude is that when you change when you get older, there's something wrong with that, but the world is stupid enough as it is; if the young were running it, it would be really dumb. Whatever changes I'm going through because I'm forty I'm thankful for, because they give me some insight into the madness I've been living in all my life."

Of course, someone must lead the opposition. And in this week's rite, a young Lou Reed from The Velvet Underground steps up to the plate.