What happens when things don’t go as planned? What happens when your skills come up short? What happens if you can’t do the things you once could?
Even with the best intentions and clear goals, the path is not straight. Building is not easy. Decisions must be made.
It’s paralysis by infinite possibilities. Death by thinking. A positive feedback loop that degrades into an all out sprint in the wrong direction. It’s a crushing break up with last week’s good ideas. It’s questioning everything you think you know.
Choreographing is not like riding a bicycle. It’s a use it or lose it game. Decision-making is a skill defined by one’s ability to see what currently is, to see what could be, and to see what needs to change to make what is what could be. I am out of practice. I don’t see things. My blind spots are growing. My obsession with insignificant minutiae irrelevant to the big picture has become overwhelming. Decisions are not being made, visions are not being realized, and building has come to a halt.
I had to reckon with the piece that I thought I was making and the piece that I was actually making. What you think you have is what lives in your brain and your vision for the work. What you do have is what lives in front of you in the bodies of your collaborators. These two things are not the same. It’s like coming to terms with the fact that you need to break up with someone despite your enduring love. Sometimes you have to give up the idea of something for the reality of that thing.
So we tried to build. And we did build, a little. Maybe next week we’ll break up with those decisions, too. Maybe they’ll get another chance to stick around. All I know is that the training wheels are still on and there’s nothing I’d like more than fly down the hill and watch the wheels come loose. All in due time, I suppose.
Harper Addison 