Like Water

So this is how best I can trace the unfolding of this realization today:

This morning Emily White tweeted about David Lynch talking about transcendental meditation. This is the first thing I saw, still toasty in bed. The idea that we can expand ourselves over time. The twinkle and excitement in him as he speaks about it.

This evening I read the yewknee.com blog and was caught by Michael Eades' response to this article on James Franco. Not usually something I would pay attention to but describing someone's life as having "fluidity" rather than "fixed identity" smacked me upside the head the way the man in The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill struck me years ago when he said he was not a careerist. Never heard of the concept. Before that was just being a bum or indecisive or developmentally stunted.

The resulting idea:

I have studied improvisation in every art form I use for decades, but I tend to beat myself about the head about the rest of my life. The transparency of the career/marriage/kids or the loopycareerartist never seem to line up properly with my life as is.

Although I am extraordinarily good at, I do not really enjoy beating the crap out of myself. I wrote a play [How to Give Up on Your Dreams, By Not Really Trying] about how goals ruin everything but didn't really have a solution at the end because I still want the things I don't have, so am still disappointed.

But what if I allowed my life to be fluid like i allow my art to be. What if I entertained the notion that tickling certain parts of yourself can enlarge your enjoyment of what IS in your life. What if I let it flow, as Bruce Lee said, like water. Control is different from Responsibility. You can be responsible. You cannot be in control.

Some magical combination of David Lynch and James Franco are freeing my fucking mind.

I am cool with this.

Thank you internet and mostly, thank you friends who pass things along.


<3

Here is a photo of a Mongolian marmot hunter. They dress in all white and a hat with ears and carry a tassle-y something. It mesmerizes the marmots so they can get closer to get a better shot.