Monthly Archives: May 2012

to sing or not to sing

Pearl’s peonies – from the Sioux Falls farm to my place 50 years later

The song I have come to sing
remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my life
stringing and unstringing
my instrument.

                                           Rabindranath Tagore

I found this poem by Tagore, and it happened to be on a day when I was hopelessly entangled in the minutia of my life.  I had spent about an hour and a half trying to figure out the signature on my emails after I had been told by a friend that the links on the current one were not working. Or sifting through a bunch of stuff in preparation for a move.  Pulling weeds out of the walk way in preparation for a showing of our house.

I want to be singing the song (dancing the dance) pretty much all of the time and find that too much of my day is taken up with the stringing and unstringing of my squeaky instrument.

Part of the problem is having too many projects that I want to do.  Deciding which to do first.  Another part is feeling overwhelmed by all of them, and therefore procrastinating and finding more ways of stringing/unstringing.  I wish that I could say that the stringing and unstringing are actually meditative and prepare me for the song, like the Zen master who paints a single perfect Sumi circle at the end of his life.  But I don’t think that is the case.  I think that I am just finding ways not to sing.

Yesterday I went to New York City to meet with two booking agents, both of whom used to represent me and my dance company.  I told them that I was developing an evening length solo work.  Which is true.  But it is in its infancy, and today I feel overwhelmed by the whole idea, the whole project.

Maybe I won’t sing (dance) after all.  I am sure that the front walk needs more weeding.

Or maybe I will find a way to notice when I have gotten swallowed by my preoccupation with the details and learn to lift my eyes to the horizon, taking a broader, more breathing view of the possibilities that lay before me.

 

 

 

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performance time

Still from the video dance Dive by Paula Josa-Jones and Ellen Sebring

Tuesday night at Helsinki in Hudson, NY, I will perform a solo for the first time in thirteen years.  I am excited, nervous and pleased to be doing it.

It’s part of an open mic series hosted by Ryder Cooley.  I hope you will join us.  8-9:30.  See you there.

remember

Today is Memorial Day.

what do you remember?

I remember the touch of my mother’s hand,

my exuberant father,

the feel of my cat’s Balthazar’s long body

draped over my shoulder.

The smell of a peony from this morning,

the shape of my daughter’s back

(she is singing now

and I am remembering song after song

sung for me, with me).

I remember the raucous laughter of

my South Dakota relatives

down on the farm,

the feel of Capprichio’s nose on my lips.

I remember my own dancing,

my own wild heart.

We are supposed to remember

the fallen on this day.

Besides those friends and strangers,

we must remember to

appreciate all of it –

what is here today, just now

one delicious moment at a time.