Dillon Paul in Saddle Dance, Photo by Jeffrey Anderson
Returning from my lovely, sanctified artists’ residency in beautiful Bogliasco, Italy, I can no longer deny that there are litter pans to be scooped, dogs to be walked, food to be cooked, house to be cleaned, taxes to be managed, well you know, all of that.
How to be back in the saddle without being saddled? How to find freedom within the limits? How to discover heat and even sensuality in the enclosures of the obligatory? How to step back into the fast, cold river of the dailies and not be swept away?
Part of what happens in the time away is a kind of deep focusing, a renewal, a delicious sense of swimming without stopping, of a seductive new rhythm of work and play, lots of play. That does not just evaporate. Yes, I have to pay attention, even work at it lightly, but it is still there, still fresh, still percolating. So I am paying attention, listening, to that instead of the frazzling call of the list. I am also experimenting with cordoning off the minutiae – not letting it leech into the time I have opened for creative work. Then there is the idea that that work – having less time to spread and widen – may in fact intensify and cook down/reduce to what is essential.
Mary Oliver, in Blue Pastures, says that it takes “about seventy hours to drag a poem into the light.” Reminding me to give things time, that it is not only about letting the light find the dance or the idea or the words, but that dragging and pushing are also needed.
