Friday, November 28, 2008

Doing Everything in Nothing

I've been kicking my self lately since I have been doing nothing on my play. Other things have been taking up my time: a wedding, working for Obama. I'm not a great multi-tasker. And on my list of important things the previous two items easily came first. Then one day I read a story of a taxi cab driver helping a dying woman. Normally i'd feel wellings in my upper chest - sensations almost outside my body. But that day I was feeling heart tugs and tears coming from the very center of me. After that when I'd be hearing the stories of my daughters, my husband or simply feeling my love for them, I could feel my heart. I could feel motion and movement and upwhellings and spirals of sensation emanating from my heart. Some days it would be the same old sensations of before and then some days it would feel like an explosion. A profound change.

A profound change out of nowhere? Realization. For months I've been repeating Emily Dickinson's "A Single Screw of Flesh" to myself under my breath, out loud, before I fall asleep, choreographing it with my hands, saying just the vowels in it then the more muscular consonants- even sending it out from on "stage" in an ancient Greek theater. Just simply saying this poem over and over in different ways in small little snatches of time. Feeling the impact of words on me. Feeling the sounds and rhythms. Catching the feelings and sending them out into the world. It was just one poem. Small actions of inconsequence. I was doing "nothing". Not really a work at all. And then, amazing grace. In working on something small I was doing everything.

Sunday, November 16, 2008